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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28560111">This is Not a Pipe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegables/pseuds/thegables'>thegables</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cambridge, Dark Academia, First Time, Getting Together, Greg is a choir director, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Sexual Discovery, Slow Burn, Tweed - Freeform, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virginity, complicated feelings about desire, let's say professor AU, lol choir director AU?, mycroft is a shy professor, the most specific AU no one ever asked for, what's gonna happen?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 01:07:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>45,086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28560111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegables/pseuds/thegables</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg Lestrade is a charismatic and accomplished musician. Mycroft Holmes is a shy and tweedy classics professor. Their friends realize they both plan to quit smoking in the new year. Greg is so lovely, so intimidating, and the threat of intimacy so frightening, that Mycroft keeps smoking. But all kinds of quitting are harder than they look. </p><p>(They kiss)</p><p>(If you like vulnerable Mycroft/confident Greg/Oxbridge aesthetics... *slaps top of car* this has that)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>195</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>281</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>You know how people are always like, "why is more 2020 fan fiction of the 2010 British television program Sherlock not about... choir"</p><p>Thanks for reading! I will update this! Tell me what you want to see!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">John and Sherlock were already settled in by the inn restaurant’s fireplace when Mycroft came in and ordered his typical glass of red. John waved him over. Sherlock sat beside him on the floor, wedged between the armchair and the low table, a cup of tea at his elbow. He was scribbling in a book of scores, what looked like a long flurry of sixteenth notes. The fire was hot and John was careful not to knock over his pint as he peeled off his jumper. They made a pretty little picture, Mycroft thought, of Cambridge eccentric domesticity, a gay couple cushioned by throw pillows and prestigious fellowships. “Alright, Mycroft?” John greeted him.</p><p class="p1">“Hello, John.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock looked up from his scores and blinked at his brother. “I can tell you which brand of patches I use,” he said, the very picture of generosity.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had long since given up his exasperation at being deduced by his little brother. He shed his coat and sat in the chair across from John. “I’d rather hoped to go cold turkey,” he admitted, though what he’d really hoped was to not discuss his New Year’s resolution with his younger brother. Mycroft in general tried to spend his life not discussing his personal feelings; this goal was at odds with the time he was compelled to spend with his brother and his partner. He was weakened by the fact that he found it unpleasant to hurt John Watson’s feelings.</p><p class="p1">“We don’t have the genetic predisposition to go cold turkey on anything,” Sherlock said, from experience.</p><p class="p1">“I quit Heidegger,” Mycroft deadpanned, not sure whether he was trying to be irritating or sincere, and thus feeling hot and uncomfortable.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Fox brand lasts the longest,” was all he said, and he turned back to his composition.</p><p class="p1">John had been watching them go back and forth like a tennis match before, bless him, he caught on. “You’re going to quit smoking in the new year?” He asked.</p><p class="p1">“Regretfully, yes,” Mycroft said. He felt the shyness that always emerged when he was away from his own flat or his offices, away from his books. When he taught or held tutorials he at least had the comfort of his own expertise, but here, making small talk with John and (in theory) Sherlock, he felt awkward and at a loss.</p><p class="p1">“That’s so funny,” John said, and leaned across to clink his pint against Mycroft’s wine glass. “Who else told us they were trying to quit this year? It was somebody here, at Cambridge. Who was it, Sherlock?”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock looked up from the book with an obedience he would only display for John. “Don’t know,” he said, “deleted it.”</p><p class="p1">“Who was it—somebody we’ve seen recently—oh you know, it was Greg! Greg Lestrade. He said so just last week.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s stomach lurched predictably at the pronunciation of that name. He squeezed his lips shut against the surge of nerves. <em>Don’t say that name to me</em>, he could have said to John, <em>don’t you know you’re conscripting me to hours of agonized daydreaming? </em></p><p class="p1">Greg Lestrade was the conductor of the prestigious King’s College choir, one of the most acclaimed choirs in the UK and probably the world. He was a product of a small and unprestigious university and had worked its way up through the ranks to become one of Cambridge’s brightest musical stars. He’d taken the coveted position a few years ago after a stint in the US. He’d had a famous marriage with a German conductor, making them quite the first couple of the gay choral world, and an even splashier divorce. He was silver-haired and charismatic and acclaimed and handsome. Mycroft resented the very fact of his presence at Cambridge. He was the most… flustering person Mycroft had ever met. The daydreaming was, of course, fruitless, since Mycroft was an ostensibly asexual and staid classics professor without an ounce of social confidence or swagger to his name. Rumor had it that Lestrade, meanwhile, had quite a bit of pull among his male choristers and other top musicians. This had done nothing to tarnish his reputation, and if anything had improved it. Even at 45, he was the golden boy of the university’s famed choral program.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had not known he smoked. Probably it was bad for a singer’s lungs. The image was—he dragged himself away from it carefully and said to John Watson, “I suppose it’s the time of year for it.”</p><p class="p1">John frowned. “Christmas?”</p><p class="p1">“Er—well, the new year.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes, I suppose so. I don’t nag, however. Some doctors nag but I’m not one of them.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt Sherlock studying him, and felt a cold finger of anxiety on the back of his neck. “I’m sure you develop more rapport with your patients if you don’t nag them,” he said, fumbling for anything to continue the conversation away from the subject of Greg Lestrade.</p><p class="p1">John huffed. “More that most of my patients are undergraduates, and if I took the time to nag I’d never do anything else.”</p><p class="p1">“I suppose that’s true.”</p><p class="p1">“Speaking of which,” Sherlock cut in suddenly. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and removed a small dog-eared envelope. “I’m supposed to deliver this to you, personally.” He tossed it onto the table, and Mycroft picked it up.</p><p class="p1">“What is it?”</p><p class="p1">“A ticket for our concert. Well, there’s two. Sara thought you might want to invite someone. I said I didn’t think it was likely, but apparently as the composer’s brother you ‘deserve’ a plus one.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft removed the tickets from the envelope. <em>Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, in concert, performing a new original Christmas work by Sherlock Holmes</em>. <em>Gregory Lestrade, Director of Music. King’s College Chapel, December 23rd, 2020, 7 pm. </em>He’d known it was coming, in theory—a Christmas work had in fact been one of the stipulations of Sherlock’s fellowship with King’s. He’d been a famed and prodigy composer for 15 years now, but this was his first affiliation with a university. He had taken it, Mycroft privately suspected, for John. This was as disconcerting as it was touching. The trouble was that this new affiliation with Cambridge had not only forced Mycroft to spend more time than ever with his brother. It had also brought his orbit to touch the larger, brighter orbit of Greg Lestrade.</p><p class="p1">He willed his fingers not to shake. “A Christmas work, Sherlock?” He asked. “Are you falling into the greatest black hole of musical creativity?”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock scowled. There was something comforting in the predictable way Sherlock could be offended. “It was in the terms of the contract. I did my best.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve heard it,” John offered. “It’s gorgeous. Very—” he faltered. John did not know anything about music. “Very momentous.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock scoffed.</p><p class="p1">“Momentous, you say?” Mycroft tried to make his voice as arch as possible. “In that case I’ll be there.”</p><p class="p1">He stayed as briefly with his brother and John as he could, and then walked home. It was a half hour’s walk, through the clean cold air of the little city, perfumed occasionally with the scents of Chinese food and hookah shops, but then he curved away from the student area and back into the silent sandstone blocks of Corpus Christi, his own college, until he reached his little but well-appointed flat at the far end. Comforted by being alone with his books again, Mycroft had another glass of wine, and, for good measure, a cigarette, and read about the religious practices of the Roman Empire at the Euphrates until the early hours of the morning.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">It snowed every day in the week leading up to the concert. Mycroft halfheartedly invited his friend Anthea to go with him, knowing she would say no, and she did. In the end he walked alone through the frigid streets, his fingers numb in his gloves, to the beautiful King’s College Chapel. The inner quad of King’s had been illuminated by hundreds of little candles—the real sort, not LED—in white paper bags, giving the green a ghostly shimmer over the snow. The beauty of it, with snow still frosting his hair and shoulders as it did the eaves of the medieval buildings, took his breath for a moment. It was so beautiful that he felt, at once, terrifically lonely. He shivered in his coat. It was the sort of loneliness so powerful in its melancholy that he did not quite want to leave it.</p><p class="p1">Finally, however, the crowd behind him started to pick up, and he slipped into the chapel. Mycroft had always carried a bit of a pointless grudge against the King’s chapel, because it was so much more famous and admired than the one at Corpus Christi, which was nearly as old. But even he had to admit that there was a splendor to this place, with its towering ceiling and buttresses like a row of soldiers. Every footstep made a soft, echoing noise. He loved its unfashionableness, the subtle grime built up on the dark mottled wood of the quire, most of all. Tonight it had been set up with additional chairs, filling up the nave nearly to the front, to provide seating for the large anticipated audience.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft saw John, seated already in the front row, and was waved over. Sheepishly he went. He had hoped to slink into the back. “What a place, isn’t it?” John tipped his head all the way back to regard the ceiling. He had a tourist’s gaze, and for an ugly moment Mycroft envied and resented him for it. Then he said, “One of the most beautiful I know. Nothing to Christi’s, however.”</p><p class="p1">John smirked. “‘Course not.”</p><p class="p1">They were joined moments later by Sherlock, kitted out in a fine tuxedo, de rigueur for the guest of honor. He wore a neat black bowtie and cummerbund, his curls neat and glossy, every detail seen to.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft squinted at him. “You look very nice,” he said blandly, and Sherlock, correctly understanding the implication, scoffed, “Oh do shut up.”</p><p class="p1">Within moments he was being fussed over by top administrators of the choral program and the college itself, distinguished guests from as far as London and Edinburgh, and John and Mycroft were left to observe.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock hated performances of his work, Mycroft knew. His work had already been done, and now he had to sit politely (still) and watch other people, inevitably, in his eyes, muck it up. He was merely trotted out, as if to say, here is the human form of the mind that has imagined this music. Sherlock hated the pageantry. “Dull,” he’d say, and John would tut and remind him of his responsibility to the university or the symphony or the commissioning body. So here was the mysterious genius composer, one of King’s greatest recent acquisitions, fidgeting in a slim-cut tuxedo with his entourage: a small-statured campus physician wearing a jumper under his suit jacket and a gunshot scar under that, and a shy, shabby classics professor who fit the stereotype in every way. There might have been confusion about which was the partner and which the brother, but Sherlock and Mycroft’s shared lanky stature made that impossible. Mycroft badly coveted invisibility.</p><p class="p1">Soon the concert was to begin. Sherlock stole back to his seat and submitted to sit with John’s hand on his knee. The chancellor of the college said a few words, reminded the audience of the traditional Lessons and Carols performances that were concluding with the service the next day, Christmas Eve, and then introduced the choir. They did not wear their red and white church uniforms, as this was not a church service, and wore suits instead. Finally, last of all, in strode the conductor. The room was so silent with anticipation that one could hear the soles of his shoes on the stone.</p><p class="p1">Greg Lestrade wore a tuxedo with bloody <em>coattails</em>, the jacket cropped short in front. He wore a tiny white poppy pin at his lapel. <em>Christ above</em>, Mycroft thought<em>, on top of all of his other charms, must the man be a pacifist as well? </em>The white bowtie and crisp shirt collar showed off the tan tone of his skin and, lord, the dignified silvery-grey of his closely cropped hair. He turned to the audience, who began to applaud for his arrival, and the flash of his dark eyes and the breadth, the candor of his smile made Mycroft’s chest hurt.</p><p class="p1">Lestrade’s eyes settled upon the front row and gave a friendly head tilt of recognition to all three of them—they’d met many times through Sherlock’s affiliation—and a special smirk to Sherlock, as if to say, <em>We’ll do our best, sir, we will. </em>Mycroft’s heart was in his throat. Then Lestrade whirled to the choir. He gazed at them for a moment, perhaps imparting some final piece of silent advice. Everyone was utterly still. He held the attention of the room in his fingertips.</p><p class="p1">Finally, with one minute, agile movement, he raised both empty hands to the organist, and a moment later, to the choir. Both exploded in bright, cascading arpeggios of sound, every eye trained on Lestrade’s hands.</p><p class="p1">He did not use a baton, as many conductors did, a move that Mycroft perhaps overgenerously interpreted as humble and earthy. And then, he did not need to. He could communicate a great deal with the width of his wingspan and the precision of his fingers, which kept time, signaled entrances and cutoffs, and suggested dynamic shifts. The tails of his tuxedo jacket flapped lightly, giving him an old-worldly aplomb as he conducted. Mycroft was struck by the strangeness of hearing the familiar style of Sherlock’s composition directed by this unbelievably lovely vessel.</p><p class="p1">At the end of the first movement, Lestrade turned to accept the applause of the audience, flushed and smiling with the exertion of directing the piece. Every nerve in Mycroft’s body went buzzy and light when he looked at Lestrade’s face—bright with energy and enthusiasm and the slight sheen of sweat. He was beautiful when he was working. Mycroft’s eyes dropped to his lap immediately. Greg Lestrade’s existence was unfair. He tried to keep his eyes down for the rest of the performance. He escaped as soon as he could outside, to have a cigarette.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Mycroft learned two things that evening. The first was what Greg Lestrade looked like when he was conducting (life-ruining). The second was that world-renowned choral performances have afterparties (unofficial, very drunk).</p><p class="p1">“Please,” John said, both laughing and plaintive. “I’ll be the only non-musician there otherwise and they’ll talk about super-fugues all night and I’ll be utterly lost.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft frowned. “There’s no such thing.”</p><p class="p1">John groaned. “Precisely, Mycroft, look, just an hour—.”</p><p class="p1">It was impossible for Mycroft to think that he would be better company at a party than a snobby musician, who might at least make lively conversation. Mycroft felt overwhelmed and lost at these sorts of things, and usually spent the duration waiting until it would be appropriate to go out for a fag break again. Tonight, however, he was tempted. For reasons that did not bear thinking about. “I will come for an hour,” he said, stamping the cigarette out and stooping to pick up the butt. King’s College green was not to be disrespected.</p><p class="p1">John thumped him on the back and went to find the guest of honor.</p><p class="p1">The party was being held at the organist’s flat, apparently, in a smoke-filled room with no music playing. Mycroft became incredibly anxious when he caught sight of the bassist, violist, and two senior singers snorting something in a bedroom, but Sherlock did not seem interested in drugs tonight. He was high on being told he was brilliant.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was halfway through a tepid, too-strong gin and tonic and a one-sided conversation with the cellist about construction at the Cambridge train station when Lestrade arrived. Mycroft’s mouth immediately went dry. Lestrade’s hair was darkened, as if he’d spent so long in the snow that it had saturated his the crown of his head. He shucked a long wool coat and then, immediately, his beautiful tuxedo jacket, casting it carelessly over the back of the sofa. He was wearing a white waistcoat that fit him without room to spare. He loosened the bowtie at his neck and then, seeming to think better of it, ripped it off and stuffed it into his pocket. Mycroft felt suddenly glad he’d come.</p><p class="p1">“Lestrade,” Sherlock said, his dark head popping up from a huddle in the living room, “thank God. Tell them.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re going to have to give me a minute, Sherlock,” Lestrade warned, grinning. “I won’t be telling anybody anything until someone can make some <em>gin happen</em>. Rogers, yes, are you the person to speak to about gin happening?” He trailed off into the kitchen, still fussing with his clothes. His voice was pitched low and slightly hoarse—not a musical voice at all. He carried himself, Mycroft thought, with such easy and uncomplicated confidence.</p><p class="p1">Greg reappeared in a few minutes, having apparently secured the occurrence of gin, and immediately began talking to John. “Are you sick of us yet, Doctor? The in-crowd gossip is absolutely embarrassing around here. Talking about the same four hookups and the same four cantatas.”</p><p class="p1">John, not so easily starstruck, said that he was happy to be around such brilliant musicians, and Greg laughed. “The only brilliant musician around here is your mister, I think. He drives me mad, I don’t mind telling you, but the work was—well, you heard it. You live with him. It’s gorgeous. He’s doing some really stunning things.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could hear the pride in John’s voice. “I’ll admit I don’t always understand every nuance of what he does. But he’s undoubtedly brilliant. It’s an honor.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t underplay yourself,” Lestrade said, sipping his drink. “I’ve spent a lot of time with him. He speaks very highly of you. Even when he doesn’t mean to. He’s absolutely gone on you.”</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh</em>. The rest was bad enough. But Lestrade was kind.</p><p class="p1">John, who certainly had enough daily indignities to deal with, living with Sherlock, was audibly touched.</p><p class="p1">Suddenly the room, with its crowd of important but unknown people, the smoke, the heat of the bodies, the gin, began to feel overwhelming to Mycroft, and he stood up to sneak away. His face felt warm and flushed and he imagined that he looked ridiculous, inept in his brown tweed suit and scuffed brogues. He was trying to make his escape, tuning out the dull roar of conversation, when he caught John’s voice again. “Oh that’s right, I was going to tell you—you’re not the only one starting new year’s resolutions early. Mycroft just said he’s quitting too. Must be a trend.”</p><p class="p1">“Is that right?” Lestrade’s voice again, deep and masculine, unconcerned. “Mycroft? There you are.”</p><p class="p1">He had spoken with Greg Lestrade on several occasions, but still hearing himself addressed this way sent a flush of excitement and embarrassment to his cheeks. He moved as carefully as he could to where John and Lestrade were standing. “Hello,” he said, desperately aware of his own awkwardness.</p><p class="p1">“You’re quitting smoking in the new year.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rubbed one hand over the top of his head. He had no idea where his coat was. “That’s an ideal I have, yes. I didn’t so much share the fact with my brother as that he instantly read the twitchiness on me.”</p><p class="p1">Lestrade laughed generously. “I know the feeling. I’ve quit four or five times now. It’s a rotten habit for someone in my line of work, but as the choir knows, I’m not exactly known for my singing—oi, Jameson, I see that smirk, the cheek—.”</p><p class="p1">Jameson, not chastened at all, went tittering into the kitchen.</p><p class="p1">“As I was saying, though,” Lestrade picked up without hesitation, “I’ve tried to quit before, and it’s no easy thing. Perhaps it’s part of the culture over in your line of work. You’re an English professor, Mycroft, is that right?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled weakly. “Classics, yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Classics, right. I imagine you all sitting around smoking pipes, but that’s probably an unfair stereotype.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt the kind of adrenaline-fueled surety, under his gaze, that he’d felt when his dissertation defense had been going well, or when he successfully navigated a congested freeway interchange. “I’m afraid to disappoint you,” he said, smiling, “but I could probably introduce you to some of my colleagues.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “I think I’ll stick with the classics professor I know, but I appreciate the offer.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what that <em>meant</em>. He looked at John, who seemed to perceive nothing extraordinary in the conversation at all. Sherlock was across the room, bullying a violinist about her circle bowing. He said, “It’ll remain open. The offer.”</p><p class="p1">“Well,” Lestrade began, and interrupted himself to grab a glass of Prosecco off a TV tray going by, held in a tipsy parody of a posh cocktail party. “Actually, let me make you an offer. Do you really want to quit smoking?”</p><p class="p1">“I do.”</p><p class="p1">“It might work better with an accountability partner, don’t you think? We could quit together.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blinked. “That does seem sensible.”</p><p class="p1">“We could meet up, compare notes, see how it’s going. Drink to compensate, probably.”</p><p class="p1">“I have heard that is a danger. But—” Mycroft contemplated quoting about four different Latin phrases that seemed relevant, but managed to hold back. “The best cure for one vice is probably to take up another.”</p><p class="p1">Lestrade laughed and smoothed his hand over his cheek, stubble-dark so late in the evening. He looked tired and rumpled and rugged, despite the primness of the waistcoat and the tuxedo jacket. Mycroft felt a longing that both was and was not more than lust. “I’d like that,” he said, and immediately felt that he’d admitted to more than he’d meant to. “It would—add to my resolve.”</p><p class="p1">There was a twinkle in Lestrade’s eye, and he gave a little huff. Mycroft wasn’t sure whether he was being laughed at. Then Lestrade said, “I reckon it would add to my resolve too. Well—let me give you my number, and we can get a pint. Or whatever classics professors drink.”</p><p class="p1">“Claret,” Mycroft deadpanned without thinking, and Lestrade doubled over with laughter.</p><p class="p1">“Claret, precisely. We’ll have a claret and promise each other not to have a fag, and then we’ll—ha, as my ex-husband used to say, he’s German, and had the best way with English, ‘we’ll get on okay if so.’”</p><p class="p1">This was all too much data for Mycroft to process. He felt faintly as if he was going to be sick. “Yes,” he said, “that sounds lovely.” He managed to exchange numbers with Lestrade, promise to text, and say a vague goodbye to John and Sherlock before making it out to the street. The snow had stopped, and he walked for a mile before figuring out precisely where he was, and then another mile home, on pavements fluffy-crunchy with fresh snow. Sherlock’s motet and Greg Lestrade’s laugh rang in his ears.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smoked three cigarettes in a row before going to meet Greg Lestrade for their inaugural quitting summit. The snow was melting and he stood nearly ankle deep in slush, in inadequate boots, waiting for four o’clock to come. It was the third day of the year.</p><p class="p1">He watched an old, beat-up Saab pass him and park up the street, across from the pub he’d chosen at Greg’s urging. The parking job was haphazard at best. Lestrade himself emerged from the car, dressed in grey jeans and a worn leather jacket, slogging with confidence through the thick slush. He had a black scarf around his neck. He looked at his phone, as if confirming the location, and then went into the pub. He had not noticed Mycroft shivering and smoking down the street from him.</p><p class="p1">Swallowing hard, Mycroft stamped out his last butt and walked down toward the pub. Inside it was warm and quiet, all dark wood and murmured conversation. He’d chosen the place for its quietness and for its balance—not a pub for students, tourists, or sports fans, just a small place that sold good wine as well as beer, and had roomy, tucked-away booths. He found Greg in one of the booths, still unwrapping his scarf. “Alright, Mycroft?” He said with an easy smile. He took one look at Mycroft and slid out of the booth. “First round’s on me. Are you cold? I’m frozen. What would you say to a hot toddy?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt impossibly flustered. He couldn’t think of anything except: <em>first round</em>. <em>He thinks we’ll be here a while. </em>Even stranger, that Greg had noticed he was cold and ventured to do something about it. But perhaps he was just cold himself. It was a wretched day. Mycroft nodded and finally said, “That sounds—ideal.”</p><p class="p1">“Cheers.” Greg fumbled through his coat pockets for his wallet and then strode toward the bar. He returned in a moment with a mug in each hand and a packet of crisps between his teeth. “Why is it,” he mused as he slid into the booth, “that when bars sell crap snacks it’s always the most irresistible thing in the world? I’d never buy prawn crisps in the supermarket.”</p><p class="p1">“They do sound good,” Mycroft admitted. He wondered if Greg could smell smoke on him. “Here.” He took the bag and opened it, then split the shiny wrapping down the sides, making an open plate of crisps they could share.</p><p class="p1">“Brilliant.” Greg sipped the hot toddy. “It’s strong! I’ve never been here before.”</p><p class="p1">“Strong drinks is one of its advantages.”</p><p class="p1">“I like it.” They smiled at each other for a moment. Between his gaze and the drink, Mycroft felt his internal temperature climb. He felt at once extremely anxious and strangely at ease, sitting here with this charismatic and highly respected man. He puts his hands in his lap so Lestrade could not see his fingers shaking.</p><p class="p1">Lestrade sighed, content, and leaned back. “So. I don’t mean to get down to business, or anything, I’m not in a hurry, but. What was the last time you had a cigarette?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft grimaced. “That’s a skillful interrogation tactic, that.”</p><p class="p1">Lestrade laughed. “What, asking one question?”</p><p class="p1">“Mm.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, it’s been a week for me, but only by the skin of my teeth. I keep meaning to buy the gum, but I can’t fathom spending so much money on something so horrid.”</p><p class="p1">“I admit I find all the quitting crutches unpleasant, too.” The hot toddy was strong with middle-end whiskey, and a little overly sweet. Its warmth curled in Mycroft’s chest. “And while I’m admitting—”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “Go on, then.”</p><p class="p1">“Quitting has been more of a state of mind than a real practice, so far.” Which was to say, <em>quitting was going fine until I associated it with you. Until I knew you wanted to have a drink with me. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg twisted his mouth, thinking. Then he smirked. “Do you have any on you now?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blushed for real, not a happy little spread of heat but a vicious, blotchy, sweaty thing, an embarrassed hot flash. He felt absurdly resentful of Greg suddenly, for his confidence and savoir faire, for the way his questions immediately cut to the quick. He seemed to <em>perceive </em>Mycroft with a kind of alarming clarity, in a way most people absolutely did not. Mycroft, probably because of a personal character flaw, found this frightening and a little insulting.</p><p class="p1">Greg, seeing this expression, faltered. “I mean—I don’t have any right, who am I, really, to police what you do.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft shook his head, willing the blush to fade. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and put the pack on the table.</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled. “Shameful, really.”</p><p class="p1">“Everything about this is shameful.”</p><p class="p1">Greg leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “How many are left?”</p><p class="p1">“In the pack—er, seven.”</p><p class="p1">“Damn. If it were two or three, I would have said we should finish them off here and now.”</p><p class="p1">Any more cigarettes within the hour would give Mycroft a terrible headache, but he couldn’t admit this to Greg Lestrade. He wanted badly to change the subject. “We’ll have to find another symbolic surrender,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled. “That bin, by the door, right now, and then another round, to commemorate.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s hot toddy was only half gone. He looked across and sure enough, Greg had drained his. He looked up uncertainly. Greg was still grinning at him. “Go on,” he said, “I’m here for moral support.”</p><p class="p1">Feeling put-out and humiliatingly aroused by the command, Mycroft binned the pack of cigarettes. He went to the bar without asking Greg what he wanted, and returned with two expensive glasses of rye.</p><p class="p1">Greg didn’t react to the offering, just raised his eyebrows and sipped appreciatively. He looked so good in the low lighting of the pub that Mycroft’s teeth hurt. He ventured, “Why did you decide to quit?”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned, as if this was a surprising question. “Like I said, not exactly a good practice for a musician.”</p><p class="p1">“Do conductors often sing?”</p><p class="p1">“You’re thinking that I don’t sound like I have a set of pipes on me?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft demurred, awkward and chastened.</p><p class="p1">“It’s a joke. I can sing fine. I was a fine baritone, back in the day. Now mostly my role is to choose the music, occasionally model something. With the boys, mostly. I need to brush up my falsetto.”</p><p class="p1">“The—boys?” Mycroft’s mind flashed to the rumors of Lestrade bedding the handsome young men of the tenor section, let alone other well-known conductors.</p><p class="p1">He nodded. “The King’s Choir is all male voices, traditionally, so we have boys for the treble parts, especially for services during the week. They’re, what—eight to thirteen? And such a kick.” A smile of exasperated fondness spread across his face. “So serious, most of them. Big musical aspirations. And they sing like angels, obviously, but the <em>noise </em>they make! On breaks!”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could not help but smile, relieved. “Have you taught children before?”</p><p class="p1">“Never. Apparently some people turn down this gig because of that. But no, it’s great. It’s a tradition.”</p><p class="p1">“That sounds—extremely daunting.”</p><p class="p1">He huffed. “It’s just choir.”</p><p class="p1">“Just choir! It’s <em>King’s College </em>choir. Surely you understand the magnitude, the—”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed aloud, booming and unconcerned. “Are you trying to scare me? No, I’m telling you. Do you mind? That’s what people forget. That’s what I forget sometimes. I get up there, in that chapel, with that organ, and the history, and these amazing musicians with me on every side, and I have to tell myself: it’s just choir. Otherwise I’ll lose my mind, Mycroft. I have to say: it’s just choir. I wave my hands about, they sing, then we sit down again. That’s all.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked at him openly. He was mystified. This man before him, with a PhD in choral music from UCL, with endless guest conducting accolades and fellowships to his name, one of the most well-regarded conductors in Britain. It was strange to think of his uncomplicated philosophy. It was far stranger to think that he <em>needed </em>that philosophy, that he’d be intimidated otherwise. Greg Lestrade seemed like the least intimidatable person he’d ever met. Mycroft, grasping for something to say, finally managed, “You’re a humble person.”</p><p class="p1">“Ha! On a good day, maybe. Well. You’ve seen me in action, it’s not a hard job. Enough about me. What <em>you </em>do seems much harder.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blinked. “That seems impossible.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh?”<br/>“You don’t want to hear about what I do.” Mycroft sipped his rye and then kept looking down at the table.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t tell me what I don’t want,” Greg said, stern and petulant, and Mycroft looked up, shocked. When he did he saw a curious expression on Greg’s face that he couldn’t read. A shiver of unease went through him. Greg finally cracked a smile. “Think of it this way. If it’s boring, every time I want to have a cigarette in the next week, I’ll think about your job, and just—I won’t have one. So it’s incentive, you’re providing. Which is the purpose of this entire meeting.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft sighed. “That’s circular logic.”</p><p class="p1">“Humor me.”</p><p class="p1">The whiskey was cool and fiery going down Mycroft’s throat. His fingers still felt cold against the chipped cut-glass tumbler. “I study Roman antiquity. I lecture, and give tutorials, and write scholarly books.”</p><p class="p1">“Roman antiquity.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Laurel crowns and sandals.”</p><p class="p1">“Precisely.”</p><p class="p1">“Do you study—the literature of it, or the culture?”</p><p class="p1">It was an apt question from a nonspecialist. Mycroft found a traitorous desire in himself to really tell him. “Both, sometimes. We don’t have as much literature from the time, of course, although some people are strictly Virgil scholars, or what have you—. Right now I’m researching about religious practices.”</p><p class="p1">The weight of Greg’s regard was very heavy. “That’s very posh, Mycroft,” he said, solemnly, as if making a proclamation.</p><p class="p1">The back of Mycroft’s neck felt fire-branded. “You directed a concert in King’s College Chapel,” he counter-accused. <em>In tails. In a tuxedo fitted within an inch of your life. You jetted across Europe and America with your European husband. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg rested his chin in his hand. “Posh isn’t bad,” he said kindly.</p><p class="p1">Oh. Mycroft really had to stop interpreting everything as an accusation. <em>Not everyone is trying to laugh at you</em>. He was reminded of trying to figure out whether Greg had been laughing at him, when they’d first made this pact. He still didn’t know. He risked a glance up at him. “Are you going to buy the gum?”</p><p class="p1">Greg grimaced. “Are you?”</p><p class="p1">“Sherlock recommends patches.”</p><p class="p1">“Sherlock wears four patches at a time and still vapes when John’s out of town,” Greg pointed out, and Mycroft’s heart caught, even as he smirked. This man cared about his brilliant, impossible, exhausting brother. Mycroft wondered if he knew about the harder drugs Sherlock had experience with.</p><p class="p1">“Then we won’t take patches as a guarantee of success,” he said primly. “Or gum. Perhaps I just—won’t smoke.”</p><p class="p1">Greg let out an undignified little laugh. “You just won’t smoke, eh?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft straightened his spine. “I won’t smoke. It’s just choir.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t steal my catchphrase! Surely you know lots of fancy Latin to be going on with, you don’t need my catchphrase.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rose, and grabbed for his coat. “<em>Avide audimus</em>,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Greg looked up at him without standing up. “You’ll tell me what it means when you feel like it,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“Maybe,” Mycroft said.</p><p class="p1">“Wait—can we do this again? Say how not-smoking went?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt he was blushing again but could not be sure. Standing up beside him, next to the booth, he felt hyper-consciousness of his clothes, a traditional tweed uniform that felt like a caricature of the scholarly life he had half-heartedly described. He was pretty sure this jacket had <em>elbow patches</em>, for Chrissakes. He thought instead about seeing Greg again. “Yes,” he said, “of course.”</p><p class="p1">“Two weeks?”</p><p class="p1">“Two weeks.”</p><p class="p1">“Thanks for the whiskey, Mycroft.” He still hadn’t gotten up. Mycroft had no choice but to flee, which he did. He bought another pack of cigarettes on the way home, but did not open them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Mycroft had had the Corpus Christi flat on Trumpington Street for eight years. It was a condition of his contract, that he had the right to take it or turn it down. The building had been constructed in the late 1500s, by most accounts, and his gas hob worked about 80% of the time. The floors were uneven, and he’d covered them with thick Turkish rugs and sheepskins, because he hated being cold. The bookshelves did not match but were all antiques. After the first six months, he’d stopped banging his head on the sloped ceiling above his bed. He burned a lot of incense and listened to radio news and always sat in the same comfortable chair to read, a tablet next to him so he could take notes. Sometime in the early twentieth century a little balcony had been added to the back of the flat, built out of structurally uncertain iron, and out here he smoked and kept a basil plant in the summer.</p><p class="p1">This sort of life didn’t seem hollow until he was actually outside the flat, with other people. When he was inside the flat, it felt like an extension of his own body, a comfortable reinforcement of his selfhood and his accomplishments and his wants. Then, very occasionally, usually on a Sunday, this fantasy came crashing down and he was so lonely that his whole body hurt. He didn’t know what to do for this other than to wait for it to pass.</p><p class="p1">The week after meeting with Greg Lestrade, he lectured on Tuesday and gave tutorials on Wednesday and Thursday, and spent the rest of the time reading, writing, marking, attending department meetings, and walking, as usual. But his mind had a new parallel track. When the line for the automatic tills at Waitrose ran long, he could neatly escape to this new plane. Not the readers reports on his latest manuscript, and not the necessity of improving his years-old PowerPoint on the settling of Roman Britain, with its Google-image-copy-pasted images of Hadrian’s Wall. Just. Well.</p><p class="p1">Greg Lestrade talked with his hands. Like conducting a conversation in the most literal sense. Broad, intelligent fingers, weathered palms, neat nails. Even the way Greg Lestrade talked had a downbeat. He knew where every measure started, and when his eyes caught Mycroft’s it was with the slightest edge of <em>pay attention</em>, <em>I am keeping the rhythm. </em></p><p class="p1">Thinking about other kinds of rhythm Greg might be able to keep.</p><p class="p1">Thinking about the way the muscles in his back would bunch and flex when he raised both arms to quiet a multitude.</p><p class="p1">Greg saying, quieting Mycroft: <em>Don’t tell me what I don’t want. </em></p><p class="p1">When Mycroft checked out and got back to his car with the shopping, he put his forehead on the steering wheel and told himself not to be silly.</p><p class="p1">Greg Lestrade is:</p><p class="p1">Friendly to everyone</p><p class="p1">Important</p><p class="p1">Busy</p><p class="p1">Gay</p><p class="p1">Out</p><p class="p1">Linked to multiple well-known gay musicians</p><p class="p1">Friendly to Sherlock, friendly to me, his brother</p><p class="p1">Energetic enough to go to the pub with any number of casual friends</p><p class="p1">Broad-shouldered</p><p class="p1">A Baritone</p><p class="p1">Divorced from a blond-haired German conductor and composer I have Googled</p><p class="p1">Beautiful</p><p class="p1">Beautiful</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">When he arrived at home, he ate an apple and smoked two cigarettes and then, as he had done so many times before, took solace in the events of the second century AD.</p><p class="p1">An hour into his reading, Greg texted to confirm a time and place for their next meeting.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">He had no goals for this meeting, other than to seem like a person who had not been illicitly smoking cigarettes. He supposed that his foremost goal was to gawk at Greg, that and to get to spend whatever narrow sliver of time he could with him. This was shameful, pathetic, unutterably so, but it was true.</p><p class="p1">When Greg arrived, a few minutes late, it became clear that he did indeed have a goal. He stood for a minute and regarded Mycroft, who sat in the same booth with two glasses of whiskey in front of him, and then he reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a library copy of <em>Roman Britain Today. </em>He plunked it on the table in front of Mycroft, making the glasses jump.</p><p class="p1">“Hello,” Mycroft said.</p><p class="p1">“Hello, Mycroft.” He was smiling. He sat down across from Mycroft and swigged from the whiskey, overenthusiastically, and then winced.</p><p class="p1">“You’ve brought a copy of my book,” Mycroft observed.</p><p class="p1">“I was going to buy it, for better dramatic effect, you understand, but it cost 80 quid! On Amazon!”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled. “Surely you are already familiar with the perils of academic publishing.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m not that kind of doctor. I don’t publish.”</p><p class="p1">“Just choir, eh?”</p><p class="p1">“What did I say about catchphrase stealing, Dr. Holmes?”</p><p class="p1">It was… not good. How much Mycroft liked the sound of that. It was not good at all. He looked hard into his lap, his face drawn. He knew his shoulders were up around his ears.</p><p class="p1">Greg cleared his throat. “It’s a joke,” he said, but did not seem particularly bothered by Mycroft’s sudden silence, blazing ahead: “Aren’t you going to ask me why I checked out your book?”</p><p class="p1">Other questions were closer to the front of Mycroft’s mind. But he twisted his hands, forced himself to look up. Greg was wearing a crisp blue button-up, open at the neck, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days, so salt and pepper stubble covered the lower part of his face. He had—he actually had an earring in one ear. There was something simultaneously masculine and queer about the whole tableau and Mycroft wanted to disappear, to turn to vapor and float away. His mouth was so dry. “Yes,” he said finally, and remembered the existence of whiskey. This helped. “Why did you check out my book?”<br/>Greg, to his surprise, grinned. “I’m so glad you asked. I just—well I get the sense that not a lot of people ask you questions about yourself, or show curiosity about your work, and I just thought that seemed unfair.”</p><p class="p1">“And you went with <em>Roman Britain Today</em>,” Mycroft observed, getting his feet under him once again. “2011, if I recall.”</p><p class="p1">Greg squinted. “<em>The Poetry of Horace </em>seemed a little out of my depth, if I’m honest.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft huffed.</p><p class="p1">“I know more Latin than the average bloke, because of the sacred music. I can stumble along okay in a lot of it, but obviously most of the stuff I know is your boilerplate <em>Kyrie eleison, christe eleison, dona nobis pacem </em>kind of scene.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft couldn’t help it; he laughed aloud. “That wouldn’t be very useful in deciphering Horace, no. Quite a bit more useful when teaching boys in red skirts to sing the great sacred works.”</p><p class="p1">Greg smirked and leaned in, saying confidentially, “Can you believe those outfits? I’m as British as the next one but I find them <em>strange.</em>”</p><p class="p1">“Are you religious, yourself?”</p><p class="p1">Greg shook his head. “If it’s supposed to mean something concrete, like heaven, or I’m supposed to give my life to it? Nah. But—well. The music does make you think about things differently. <em>Kyrie eleison</em>—those words. I don’t know, I’m not making sense. Those words <em>help</em>. They express something vital. I’m glad I know them.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s heart was a rock inside him. He felt the sweet melancholy weight of recognition, of kindredness. “Yes,” he said. “I have often taken solace in language myself, and to imagine it with notes, with voices—I can understand what you mean.”</p><p class="p1">Greg glanced at his watch, and then, as if instantly realizing this seemed rude, said, “I’m sorry, I need to keep track of time—I have a date at 7. But yes. Speaking of taking solace… You haven’t taken solace in any <em>cigarettes </em>since I’ve seen you, have you?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had precisely learned anything <em>new </em>in this speech but still it felt like a slap. “That’s perfectly alright. I—no, as a matter of fact. No.”</p><p class="p1">“Me neither, but it’s a close thing. I almost broke down and, can you believe it, <em>ordered some gum.</em>”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could feel that he had become too serious, but he was powerless to make himself light and buoyant. This problem had plagued him his whole life. He kept imagining the thick-necked golden youth that Lestrade was off to bed after this onerous sobriety meeting had concluded. He knew he was being unfair to Greg (he did not know he was being unfair to himself). He sipped his whiskey. He looked at his own book on the table. He took a deep breath. “There’s nothing wrong with gum,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of taking up yoga myself.” <em>What a strange, baroque little lie. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. For the third time Mycroft did not know whether he was being laughed at. He flinched. Greg saw this, and his smile faded. “No, I don’t mean—if that works for you. Probably should be doing a bit more of myself. Are you a limber guy, Mycroft?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft raised his eyebrows. “I can’t say I’m known for my flexibility, no.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m—I’m sorry. I should get us another round, to properly apologize.” He got up and went to the bar without explaining more. He came back with Irish coffees, which he could not have known were a treasured vice of Mycroft’s. Mycroft was turning the pages of his book, noting objectionable syntax and bad word choices right and left. He was also remembering the period of his life in which he’d written the book, and the trips he’d taken—to Hadrian’s Wall and other monuments, to Oxford and a handful of other smaller, dustier archives. The book was a record of himself.</p><p class="p1">He kept reading when Greg sat down again and slid the Irish coffee across to him. Greg waited for a long moment, slower and more careful than he would have thought possible. Then he said, “I’m never laughing at you, you know.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked up. He was bewildered to have his discomfort so accurately read.</p><p class="p1">Greg fidgeted with his wallet. Then he said, with a slow, childish simplicity, “Being shy is not bad.”</p><p class="p1">It was such a ridiculous statement, so bluntly put, that Mycroft nearly laughed at <em>him</em>. He didn’t understand at all. “I’m sure I appreciate the character lesson,” he said, hating the prickliness in his own voice, “but I’m fairly confident the image of myself doing yoga is indeed a comical one, so there’s no harm in laughing.”</p><p class="p1">Greg looked at him for a long time, his gaze uncertain. Then he shook his head, and then he smiled. “Drink your coffee,” he said, so Mycroft did.</p><p class="p1">They sat quietly for a long minute. “Do you know what would improve this?” Mycroft said finally, eyes in his drink.</p><p class="p1">“Cigarettes,” Greg supplied promptly. They both nodded. “I didn’t read your book. I skimmed the beginning.”</p><p class="p1">“I couldn’t say if I stand by any of it now.”</p><p class="p1">He shrugged. “If I look back on my conducting from more than two weeks ago I get embarrassed. But this—this seems very… up to date. For classics. No offense.”</p><p class="p1">“I appreciate that. I suppose—you know, it’s a constant conversation in my discipline, how much we ought to linger in the past, seeking to shed light on these past civilizations, and how much we need to. Hmm. <em>Modernize.</em> This book was an attempt to see the traces of the past in the UK as it exists now.”</p><p class="p1">“So you’re in the modernize camp, then.”</p><p class="p1">“Reception theory, we call it sometimes. And the answer is: not always. I wasn’t always. So you can see with <em>The Poetry of Horace.</em>” Mycroft smiled. “I have wanted to tunnel into the past. I’m not immune to that. It’s a very romantic vision, especially as a job.”</p><p class="p1">“What do you mean?”</p><p class="p1">“Oh—this fantasy of being a Cambridge don, reveling in the big questions and sitting in dusty libraries all day with men who are just like you. I lived for that fantasy, as a young man. Even when I began here. And I still love the Roman Empire. They are—what I like to think about.”</p><p class="p1">“But?” Greg’s drink was forgotten; he was twirling his napkin idly on the table as he listened.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft frowned, thinking. “I went to graduate school in America—at Princeton. I lived in New Jersey. New Jersey… is not a fantasy. Finally for the first time I did not live directly beside the Cam, on green riverbanks.” He huffed a laugh. “It didn’t precisely… radicalize me. Perhaps it ought to’ve. But it began to expand my perspective. I began to look around me, when I was home again, and saw Roman fingerprints all around me, structuring our culture now, and so I followed that route. That’s that book.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was looking at him, at his face. He shook his head, as if in disbelief. Mycroft could not quite read his expression. Greg didn’t speak.</p><p class="p1">“So, well, you wanted to ask about my work, there you have it. Don’t read the book, though, it’s dreadfully out of date.”</p><p class="p1">Greg grinned. He had brought his glass to his mouth but then just held it against his lower lip for a moment. “Why would I read the book when I have the author himself here to tell me all about it?”</p><p class="p1">“I suppose you wouldn’t.”</p><p class="p1">They were smiling at each other, something fragile and bending like spun sugar between them. Greg said in a low, soft-edged voice, “‘It’s just Rome.’”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Mycroft said. His heart hurt. At the same time he felt dazed by the pleasure of talking to this man, of being understood. “I suppose it is.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Greg left at only ten to seven for his date, saying it was only a few streets away, and putting his library copy of <em>Roman Britain Today </em>in his bag. Mycroft, constricting a tight spiral of pain and jealousy in his guts, sent him off with a weak smile. He had never felt like this before. He had never felt so fundamentally unmoored by another person, man or woman, going on a date with someone else. He had certainly <em>noticed </em>other men before, wanted to hear a particular man’s opinion more than others, or wanted to let his eyes linger on their bodies. But he’d never been able to admit it. And it had never felt like this. When John had mentioned Greg Lestrade to him, and he’d internally groaned, that had been a petty crush. He was somewhere far deeper, far sadder now. When he returned to his flat, it seemed empty in a new way.</p><p class="p1">He showered and ate leftover pasta for dinner, then climbed into bed at 9 o’clock. His resolves were weakening, worn out by the long day and the strange encounter with Greg. For a moment, he let himself think about Greg’s body. He so rarely allowed himself this. The darkness of Greg’s eyes, the spark of wit in them. The kindness of his face, even when he laughed at Mycroft. His strong chin and pronounced jawline, speckled with stubble. How it would scrape against Mycroft’s cheek, if he got too close. The breadth of Greg’s chest, how his shirt strained over his form when he reached over the table. The rest of the fantasy was imagined. Mycroft had to make guesses, not being very intimately familiar with the physicality of naked, handsome men. He’d never encountered one before, personally. He’d never acted upon what he felt. He’d tried not to feel at all. But Greg Lestrade—listening to him talk about classics with genuine interest, not faked at all, his eyes bright with what Mycroft could have sworn was wonder. A glass of whiskey pressed to his full bottom lip. The way his hands would slide over your skin, around your waist, around your hips…</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rolled over in bed. He was aware that he was hard, his cock trapped and throbbing between his body and the mattress. He didn’t do anything about it. It was an illicit attraction, uninvited and unequal, between himself and this masculine idol of confidence and talent and beauty. It was embarrassing to even admit to himself. Meeting with Greg Lestrade was not helping him quit smoking. Quite the reverse. In the morning he should text and say that he could not meet anymore. It would only result in further embarrassment and lung damage.</p><p class="p1">In the morning, as he should have predicted, his will failed. They made a plan to meet again in two weeks. Mycroft smoked on his way to work.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">By the time the meeting came around, Mycroft was down to one cigarette a day and had resolved to give up self-pity. Merely enjoy the time he had with this man whose company he liked. He was at the tail end of a bad cold, the part where you feel better and sound worse, and when Greg came into the pub and heard him cough, he frowned, left his scarf on the table, and went to the bar. He brought back a cup of tea and set it down next to the pint Mycroft had bought himself. “Humor me,” he said, and tilted his head, looking at Mycroft.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft drank the tea. “Thank you,” he said. He wanted to promise that he wasn’t contagious anymore, but he didn’t.</p><p class="p1">“You’re welcome. Are you alright?” He looked concerned.</p><p class="p1">Something hot and frail and tender bloomed in Mycroft’s chest. “Perfectly alright,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I didn’t get you a pint—wasn’t sure what you wanted.”</p><p class="p1">Greg smirked. He leaned forward over the table and dragged Mycroft’s beer toward himself. “Let me help you with that,” he said.</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh</em>. Mycroft found to his chagrin that he liked being managed.</p><p class="p1">Greg sucked down nearly half the beer in one go, the muscles of his throat working. He set it down and surreptitiously swiped at his mouth with his thumb. <em>It’s no good</em>, Mycroft thought, <em>I notice everything you do</em>.</p><p class="p1">“Long week?” Mycroft asked him, unable to hide half a smile.</p><p class="p1">Greg sighed. “I can’t believe I have to confess to you, but I did smoke half a joint this week. Does that count?”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t make the rules,” Mycroft told him.</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned. “I think you do. I think you’re the only master of self-control around here.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s face went hot. It was a spiteful commendation. He said, his voice too quiet, “Don’t be hasty.”</p><p class="p1">This got Greg’s attention. He blinked, studying him, for a long moment, and then sat back and drank his beer again. “I only ever smoke weed with one person. So it was special circumstances.”</p><p class="p1">“Ah.”</p><p class="p1">“My ex is in town. His choir is touring. They’re doing a concert tomorrow at Trinity.”</p><p class="p1">“I see. He’s also a choir director.”</p><p class="p1">Greg squinted at him, as if to say, <em>Don’t tell me you haven’t Googled. </em>“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“And a stoner.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “That’s one way to describe Jan.”</p><p class="p1">“Describe him another way.”</p><p class="p1">“Hmm. German. Looks much younger, what with—” He gestured to his grey hair. “Very tall. More bohemian than me, and somehow also with better credentials. He went to grad school in the States, like you. Actually—that’s funny, he lived in Princeton for a little bit. Maybe you overlapped.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s eyebrows lifted. “The choir college.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes, Westminster. Then at Georgetown.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s where you met him?”</p><p class="p1">Greg bit his lip, hiding a smile, as if to say, <em>So you do Google. </em>“Yes, we were only there for a year at the same time. Then, you know.” He shrugged. “Vienna.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft laughed. “You say Vienna the same way I would say ‘Wolverhampton.’”</p><p class="p1">“Who, you?” Greg scrunched up his nose, skeptical and amused. “Mycroft Holmes? I venture to say you’ve never been to Wolverhampton in your life.”</p><p class="p1">“Ah,” Mycroft said, realizing that he had voluntarily revealed personal information by accident. “I was born there.”</p><p class="p1">“You were—now that I think, I have heard Sherlock mention it.”</p><p class="p1">“Not flatteringly, I would imagine.”</p><p class="p1">“Not flatteringly.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft sipped his tea, which felt wonderful on his throat. “We both came to Cambridge as soon as we could. Sherlock a little early, as I’m sure you know.”</p><p class="p1">“He doesn’t talk about it. How old was he?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft frowned. “Thirteen. I was still an undergraduate.”</p><p class="p1">“Shit.”</p><p class="p1">“He was in composition and theory courses, making enemies left and right… He wanted me out of his way.” Mycroft was lost in the memory of that time for a moment, his constant anxiety about his tiny, brilliant brother, who at 13 had been writing preludes and sonatas and discovering alcohol and trying to suppress his furtive glances at handsome older boys. Mycroft, already an academic star and already desperately lonely. The Holmes boys, doing everything too early and too late.</p><p class="p1">He came out of it suddenly, saw Greg human and beautiful and tired in front of him, entirely present. He’d cut himself shaving that morning There were new wrinkles, happy ones, gathering at the corners of his eyes. His lips were chapped and he was wearing a chic turtleneck, one that made him look European and stylish and <em>gay</em>, god. Mycroft blushed. “But you were talking about your ex-husband. Vienna.”</p><p class="p1">Greg tilted his head, as if to say <em>I’m not quite finished with you. </em>But then: “Jan was—well. Sometimes a man represents a place to you—or at least to me. I can’t speak for everyone. There’s been more than one time I’ve fallen in love with a man when I could have, more accurately, fallen in love with a place.”</p><p class="p1">“Vienna was that place?”</p><p class="p1">He sighed and finished the beer, then settled his chin on his fist, a dreamy little pose. “In Vienna,” he said, “absolutely <em>everyone </em>plays the violin. I dated more than one person who played the <em>harpsichord</em>. You can understand what seduced me about a place like that.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft huffed, endeared and intimidated.</p><p class="p1">“That place is the center of the musical world, and I was desperate to be embraced by it, desperate to prove myself, and Jan was—well. He came by it honestly. He had the native language, and his English was perfect too, and he was, oh, let’s be honest, my type.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft inclined his head, afraid to ask.</p><p class="p1">Greg seemed to interpret it as a pursuit of the answer though. His cheeks got a tiny bit pink, if Mycroft wasn’t imagining it. “Oh—nothing really concrete. I just—I mean, well. Tall. Fair-haired. Reserved and clever. Let me natter on too much, then come in to say one brilliant thing. I’ve always had a bit of a weakness—. Long story short, Vienna made Jan happen. It didn’t work in the end. And anyway, I wanted this job. I wanted Cambridge. But we get on alright, now. We smoked a joint and gossiped like the old queers we are about choir, and that was that.”</p><p class="p1">This was all too much data. Mycroft needed a week to sort through it all. “What was the report on continental choir gossip?”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “The harpsichordists are <em>taking over</em>. It’s an epidemic.”</p><p class="p1">They drank quietly for a few minutes, a peaceful rest period. Finally Mycroft said, “Why did you want Cambridge?” He wanted to understand.</p><p class="p1">Greg lifted his eyes to the rafters, as if they were in the King’s College Chapel instead of a low-ceilinged medieval pub. “I don’t know. It was an incredible job offer, obviously, and I love sacred music. But also I think I probably fell in love with a place the right way, for the first time.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft turned to one side to cough, and then turned back. “Which was?”</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled. “Scenery,” he said. “Drink your tea.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve drunk it.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ll get you more, then.”</p><p class="p1">“Greg—.” It was the first time he’d said his name aloud. He instantly blushed to his hair.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft,” Greg said, a sing-song in his full baritone voice, and got up to get the tea.</p><p class="p1">When he came back with it, Mycroft said, “I really am alright now, I’m on the back end of the cold.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s face remained stern. “Drink it for me, then.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft stared into the teacup to avoid the temptation to study Greg’s face, or to ask, <em>What does that mean? Why would you possibly want to look after me? Is this something quitting-partners ordinarily do? </em>He drank the tea. They sat awkwardly for a moment. Finally Mycroft said, “What do you mean, scenery?”</p><p class="p1">Greg thought for a moment, and Mycroft assumed he was about to make another of his mildly poetic proclamations. Then he said, “Cambridge is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”</p><p class="p1">“It is?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s not complicated, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“Everything’s complicated.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “Everything except Cambridge.”</p><p class="p1">He was lying, or holding back the true answer, but Mycroft could not be angry with him. He felt a deep, soporific contentment steal through him, even through his anxiety. “I love it too,” he said. Greg got another pint, and then another, and they stayed there together until eight.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It should go without saying that I know nothing about the Rules of Cambridge! Disclaimer!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">They made another appointment to meet only 10 days later. “I know quitting should get easier as it goes,” Greg admitted, his eyes complicated, “But to be honest my resolve is weakening.”</p><p class="p1">But in the end Mycroft saw him sooner than that. He’d finally agreed to Anthea’s requests to go out for a Sunday lunch at the boutique inn down the Cam in Grantchester. It was late February now and the cold was deep and stale. Because he was with Anthea, they ordered pots of tea and sides of chips and glazed carrots, mains of Sunday roast with Yorkshires and potatoes. This inn was a posh place, so there was champagne and then, when Anthea talked him into it, a bottle of French red. The afternoon sluiced by. The water out the window was low and steel-colored, flowing but inert. <em>I love it here</em>, he thought, and thus resolved to get drunk.</p><p class="p1">Anthea had spent the last ten minutes embroiled in the process of “instagramming” their afternoon, but finally she looked up. As usual, she was laconic, beautiful, and deadpan. You would not know to look at her that she was a physics professor who worked closely with secret government projects. “So,” she said, tucking back a perfect curl, “Tell me about the boy.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft frowned, confused. “I don’t know who you mean. A student?”</p><p class="p1">Anthea huffed. “You’re <em>impossible</em>. How are we supposed to—oh Jesus, Mycroft. The <em>man</em>. <em>Your man</em>. Tell me about <em>Greg</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft stiffened. “He is not ‘my man.’” He looked at the table, straightening his cutlery. “To imply otherwise is foolishness.”</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">She looked intently at him. He rarely felt the full weight of Anthea’s undistracted gaze; she was the sort of genius who does eight things at once, rather than concentrating. “You have drinks with him, what, every week?”</p><p class="p1">“Every two weeks, and that—”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Still</em>. I’ve hardly seen you since this all started. You will not say his name. And I know for a <em>fact </em>that you haven’t quit smoking, even though that’s supposedly the reason why you’re meeting.”</p><p class="p1">He was blushing and cursed his circulatory system for betraying him. <em>What do you want from me? </em>He could have demanded. <em>Do you want to know that I can felled by lust just like everyone else? Do you want me to enumerate the times I’ve woken up hard, having dreamt about him? That I wish his ex-husband and his dalliances ill? That this is ruining me? </em></p><p class="p1">“Mycroft,” she said, her voice so serious that he opened his eyes. “You’re shaking.”</p><p class="p1">He sucked in a long breath, tried to school his face. “It’s hot in here. I’ve had too much to drink. I think maybe I’ll go out on the terrace and have a cigarette.” He rose, clumsily, nearly upsetting his water glass.</p><p class="p1">She made a half-hearted sound to stop him, but did not impede his progress. He felt in his jacket pocket for the cigarettes and lighter, not stopping to retrieve his coat from coat check.</p><p class="p1">It was still and cold outside on the terrace, the summer outdoor furniture mostly gone or covered with plastic protection. He went to the railing that overlooked the river. Between him and the water, to one side, was a very old, massive willow tree, currently bare of leaves. The denuded branches of the tree were orange-yellow, like all willows in the winter, and they sprang wildly into the hair and dangled over the slow water. He studied each vibrant branch as he lit the cigarette, already shivering. He could hear footsteps behind him, probably Anthea, but still the heat and rush of the nicotine soothed him.</p><p class="p1">Anthea came to stand beside him; he didn’t turn away. Her arms were wrapped around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to tease you. I know you don’t—I know this is new for you.”</p><p class="p1">He closed his eyes. He didn’t have the fortitude to lie to her. “Utterly,” he said. <em>There has never been anyone like him. </em></p><p class="p1">“Give me one of those,” she said. He could feel her impulse to lay her hand on his shoulder, repressed because he was not the sort of person given to casual touch. Still, he motioned for her to lean in and gave her a light. Then he puffed on his own neglected one.</p><p class="p1">They stood there for a moment like that before hearing the door slam behind them. There was the sound of a throat-clearing, a flustered beginning—. Mycroft wheeled around to see Lestrade himself standing on the veranda, next to a lad of thirty. Both were in fairly wrinkled shirts and jackets, a clear impression of hair-of-the-dog consumption about their faces. Greg in particular looked weary, as well as surprised. His eyes were pinned on the cigarette in Mycroft’s hand. “This is a shocking little scene,” he said, his voice low and rough.</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” Mycroft said, unable to formulate more.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft?” He asked, his eyes on the cigarette. He looked, Mycroft realized, angry. Angry and hurt, as if he’d been personally insulted. Mycroft was mystified to learn that he could hurt this man. He would not have thought he had the power to upset Greg Lestrade in any way. He put the cigarette out. “You’re still smoking,” Greg said.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft grimaced. He was trying to look everywhere but the young Adonis standing next to Greg. “Quitting is a gradual process,” he stuttered, aware that dishonesty was all over his face. He was shaking again, not from cold.</p><p class="p1">“You told me you hadn’t had a cigarette in—six weeks,” Greg marveled.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could not speak.</p><p class="p1">Greg shook his head. His face was stark white. He exhaled a long, noisy breath. “If you’re not getting—even <em>this</em>—from seeing me, what are you after? I don’t understand you at all, I really don’t.”</p><p class="p1">“Greg—” said the young Adonis, confused. Mycroft still couldn’t move. The men in crumpled jackets exited stage left.</p><p class="p1">Anthea made a bewildered noise, looking to Mycroft. He curled over the balcony and buried his face in his hands. </p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Mycroft saw the poster a few days later, pinned to a cork board in the central corridor of his academic building. <em>The King’s College Chorus in Concert: Duruflé’s Works for Organ and Choir, Trinity College Chapel, Friday, 8 pm. </em></p><p class="p1">“You are going to have to be brave,” Anthea had said, with a simplicity that reminded him of Greg himself.</p><p class="p1">He bought a ticket for the concert and threw the rest of his cigarettes in the bin.</p><p class="p1">The concert was a small one, not part of an annual tradition, and held in Trinity College Chapel, with its wood ceiling and black and white floors, instead of the soaring stone King’s Chapel. Mycroft slipped in just before it began, sitting near enough the back that he could see Greg but not be seen. This choir was men and boys, standing with open scores, lined up in the separated rows of the quire on both sides of the nave. But half the attention was devoted to the organist, a visitor from Dublin and rising star (so Mycroft had read online). Trinity had been chosen partly for its organ, which was very old and well-preserved. The organist walked out after the choir was prepared, to polite applause, and was seated before Greg appeared.</p><p class="p1">He did not wear a tuxedo with tails tonight, only a simple black suit, elegantly cut to suggest the strength of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist. He’d had a haircut, and his silvery grey hair was cropped closely along the sides and back of his head, a neat masculine silhouette. He turned to the audience to accept their applause, with half a modest bow, and his eyes were bright and merry, as if he was inviting everyone into a conspiracy, as if he might say, <em>Well you’ve come, so we’re going to try. </em>He smiled as he found his place at the music stand between the two facing sets of singers. From the inner pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled a baton, a little bulb of cork affixed to a narrow, impossibly light white rod that tapered to a point. He manipulated it effortlessly in his right hand. <em>It’s so the organist can see from the back of the chapel</em>, Mycroft thought.</p><p class="p1">Greg raised his arms, and the baton with it. When they came down, the organ simmered to life, droning a low series of notes, a carpet that the voices rose over. This requiem was inspired by Gregorian chants, and Mycroft could see why Greg had chosen them. They had the rhythm of medieval prayer that seemed to echo in the architecture of Cambridge itself. For the first few minutes, he followed each movement in his program, remembering what he’d read online before coming, but then, as the music went on, he lost himself to it. To the rising and falling streams of the voices, in tight narrow harmonies, to the low circular movement of the organ, never changing, and to Greg’s movement, as he managed two flanks of singers, aged eight to 60, and the organist at the far end of the chapel, with minute flicks of his baton and his expressions, hidden to the audience. Mycroft felt his personality slip away from him, and gladly, as he became a part of the architecture in that ancient room, reverberating with sound.</p><p class="p1">When the concert ended, with a melancholy diminuendo into silence, Greg turned around, chest heaving with exertion, to accept his audience’s praise. Almost immediately he saw Mycroft; their eyes met and Greg’s cheerful, diplomatic expression hardened, became stiff and artificial. His shoulders were rigid. Mycroft dropped his eyes to the program in his lap, but it was too late.</p><p class="p1">The rituals of the concert concluded; the musicians were singled out for praise, Greg bowed again and again, sheepish, and then the chapel began to empty. Mycroft stayed in his seat. Halfway through dismissing his singers, making sure the children were collected by parents, Greg sought him out with his eyes, saw he had remained, and nodded shortly as if to say, good, you’re following the program. So Mycroft could not leave.</p><p class="p1">Finally the chapel emptied entirely, even the organist and department administrators having departed. Greg and Mycroft stood five rows apart in the quiet room. Mycroft was scrunching his program in his hands, crumpling the cheap paper. He stood, a little unsteadily. “I binned them,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Greg nodded. “I didn’t have the right to be—.” He shook his head. “Let me show you something?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft followed obediently, toward the back of the chapel. He was unable to stop himself noticing the neat fit of Greg’s trousers over his perfect arse, not entirely hidden by the suit jacket. Greg climbed the two stairs up to the bench of the organ, covered with a worn velvet cushion. He sat. His fingertips, round and clean and expert, skimmed over three rows of keys, and then the stops. He pulled two and pushed one, and then his hands came down hard on the bottom set of keys in a series of tight slams and trills. The chapel <em>vibrated</em> with the music. It was, Mycroft knew at once, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor. Played with unblinking, prodigy skill. Greg looked across at him as his fingers flew over the keys.</p><p class="p1">After only moments he lifted them again, let them fall limply in his lap.</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t say,” Mycroft said quietly. Leave it to Greg, he thought, to play the most <em>architectural instrument</em>. The instrument that holds the whole building up. Complicated and noisy and out of fashion and beautiful.</p><p class="p1">Greg sighed. “I’m not as good as I was, once.” He rose. “When I’m in trouble, it’s always Bach. If I had my way? Always Bach.”</p><p class="p1"><em>I love you. </em>“It’s very organized,” Mycroft said. “It makes things seem possible.”</p><p class="p1">Greg slid the cover over the last set of keys. Formally, his eyes not meeting Mycroft’s, he said, “Can you forgive me, Mycroft?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft burned with love for him. It <em>hurt</em>. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. He thought of the strapping young man at Greg’s side, clearly having a morning-after late lunch, with a kind of charm and languor that Mycroft would never have. He thought of Greg saying, <em>If you’re not getting even </em>this<em> out of seeing me</em>… But what was Mycroft meant to be getting, if not solidarity over quitting? What did Greg want him to get?</p><p class="p1">They went out of the chapel and found a security guard to lock it up. They were alone in the Trinity College green, the streetlights hazy and imprecise in the fog. It was much warmer than it had been the week before. Greg left his coat hanging open over his suit. He said, “Will you go somewhere with me?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s heart was at his feet. “Where?”</p><p class="p1">A little sigh. Greg was tired. His breath swirled and clouded in the air. “It doesn’t matter.”</p><p class="p1">They walked down the long, impeccable pavement between the chapel and the grass, crossed to the entrance to the college, and were let out by the night guard. Mycroft could not stop himself from glancing to the side, often, to try to catch glimpses of Greg’s face in the darkness. He looked so beautiful, both regal and worn down, that it defied understanding. He kept having to check again, to confirm the suspicion that the man was really here. Really walking on a foggy night, after Duruflé, in the busy streets of Cambridge, with him.</p><p class="p1">After a while, when he couldn’t wait anymore, he said, “Where are we going?” Because Greg was walking with purpose.</p><p class="p1">Greg looked at him and said, vehemently and with a smile, “I told you I don’t know!”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft didn’t answer. It doesn’t make sense to question something you never thought you’d have in the first place.</p><p class="p1">They were on a quieter street now, away from the students. <em>I would walk with you all night</em>, Mycroft thought. <em>I would walk until my feet bled just to be near you</em>. He buttoned his coat higher.</p><p class="p1">Greg turned to him at once. “Are you cold?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft, convinced he was looking for a reason for the walk to end, said, “No, no.”</p><p class="p1">Greg said, as if responding to a question, “I’ve always been good at taking liberties with people and things that aren’t mine… to take liberties with. I suppose they call that entitlement.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think that’s true,” Mycroft hazarded.</p><p class="p1">“Oh, trust me.” He huffed. “What right have I to—. Mm. Whether you quit smoking or not, Mycroft, is none of my concern.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft took this as a rebuke. “You’ve invested a lot of time in the prospect.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed, somewhat hysterically. “For all I know it was a single lapse.”</p><p class="p1">“It wasn’t.”</p><p class="p1">Despite himself, Greg’s eyes flashed with intensity. “Ah,” he said. “Still. I am not your keeper. I should not have scolded you, especially not in front of—.”</p><p class="p1">They had walked, unwittingly, to the Cam. They stood now over the river on the Kitchen Bridge of St. John’s College. Mycroft knew they were within a stunning view of the Bridge of Sighs, but it was invisible in the darkness. If they were very quiet, they could hear the sound of students laughing, far off, and below that, the noise of the water. Mycroft said, “In front of Anthea?”</p><p class="p1">“Mm.”</p><p class="p1">Suddenly he blurted, “Anthea is my friend. She’s a physics professor at Corpus Christi. We’re—<em>friends</em>. She’s married to another physicist who lives in Wales.”</p><p class="p1">Greg looked at his feet. “I see,” he said after a long moment. “Just another way I—well. You see.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft didn’t speak. He felt a slow and glacial loneliness steal over him, one he did not know how to melt. Maybe it was as old as he was.</p><p class="p1">Greg said finally, “I shouldn’t have assumed. I never asked if you were—straight.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt like he was choking. “I’m not,” he said, and pressed his face to the filthy, centuries-old glass of the bridge. It smelled of mildew and dust and damp. “I’m not—anything. I’ve never—with anyone. Anyone at all.” He was shivering. The cold was inside him now. Duruflé’s requiem, a mass for the dead, was pounding in his temples.</p><p class="p1">“Alright,” Greg said, and his voice was soothing. “Alright.”</p><p class="p1">“I threw the cigarettes in the bin,” Mycroft said, as miserable as he’d ever been.</p><p class="p1">“You’re freezing.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m fine.”</p><p class="p1">“We’re calling an uber.”</p><p class="p1">They walked back through the college to the main road, where there was more ambient light. Greg’s face was less heavy now, younger somehow. When he put Mycroft in an uber to go four blocks down Trinity, he rested his hand on Mycroft’s shoulder for a moment. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said, and then he was gone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much for your kudos and comments! They really motivate me to keep writing quickly.</p><p>I've made a Spotify playlist for this fic! It includes the music mentioned in the story, as well as similar music, other pieces by the King's College Choir, and more popular music that reminds me of the dynamics of the story. Check it out, and let me know if you listen to it!</p><p>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2su2fXpucL5isNb0X1CYSF?si=vWQkatYmS4aVZqwpCG2rCA</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Mycroft was able to put off an invitation to Sherlock and John’s for dinner for two weeks, but not longer. “You’ll hurt John’s feelings,” Sherlock texted, which, as it had been before, was a trump card.</p><p class="p1">That, and Mycroft rather liked the little house outside of Cambridge at 22 Baker Road. It had a grand piano, a tiny matchbox kitchen, and a wall of bookshelves that contained sheet music, chemistry textbooks, and David Baldacci thrillers.</p><p class="p1">It was different, spending time with his brother since John had come along. Sherlock only spent half the time furiously sawing at a violin. There was dinner, and wine, no cigarettes thank you very much, and Sherlock decided he could sit politely and chat as long as he could simultaneously lay out and rosin every one of his bows.</p><p class="p1">John had an affection for a bitter Italian after-dinner liquor that a previous girlfriend had introduced him to, and Mycroft strongly associated its taste, syrupy and earthy with a slight chemical tang, with these after-dinner conversations. And with what usually followed: Sherlock doing his utmost to drive Mycroft mad. “So, brother,” he said, swinging a leg over two violas splayed out on the floor, “What on earth have you done to poor Lestrade?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft froze with the tiny glass of aperitif at his lips. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p><p class="p1">“Sherlock,” John said gently, as if he knew what this was about. This made everything ten times worse.</p><p class="p1">“Of course you know, and it’s been highly inconvenient for me, I must say. Lestrade has been positively ghastly in all our meetings. Short-tempered and handwringing and sighing. I would say you’ve done a right number on him, although I don’t have any idea how.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was sweating in his jumper. “Lestrade and I are acquaintances, no more. I can’t imagine I have any impact on his moods.”</p><p class="p1">“Acquaintances.” Sherlock pointed a long, gleaming bow at Mycroft across the living room. <em>En garde. </em></p><p class="p1">“Yes. We met occasionally to discuss the process of quitting smoking.”</p><p class="p1">“That was the extent of the entanglement?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft knew he was being trapped now, but he couldn’t stop denying. That tactic had never served him well. <em>Deny you’ve been caught staring at that other boy; deny you got the highest score in the class; deny you lost track of Sherlock in New York City and found him high out of his mind at Radio City Music Hall</em>. Why did he never learn? “That was the extent of the entanglement,” he said. In a bizarre and pathetic sense, it was true.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock pulled a long slice of a badly tuned G string, a flat reproaching sound. “Then why did he ask me if I knew ‘whether you were alright?’ You’ve been ignoring his texts. He seemed to think you had been taken ill, or had an emotional breakdown.” Sherlock blinked up at his brother. “Have you had an emotional breakdown?”</p><p class="p1">“I have not had an emotional breakdown,” Mycroft said, his heartbeat loud in his ears. “I merely have—fallen out of contact with him. I’ve been very busy.” Greg had texted him several times after that night on the bridge, apologizing, asking after his cold, which had been gone already for a week, asking to meet. Mycroft had left them all unanswered.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sure Greg knows that,” John said soothingly. Mycroft could have turned on him with melodramatic rage and said, <em>You! You did this! </em>Of course he refrained.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock was still appraising Mycroft. “You’re not busy. Your next book isn’t due for a year, you have no graduate students near defending and you’ve recently finished your term as department chair. I cannot possibly conceive of what’s keeping you so busy. The two of you had some manner of confrontation, and he declared something to you, and you’re rejecting him. It’s asinine.”</p><p class="p1">For a moment Mycroft longed for this version of events to be true, so intensely that he could hardly sit upright. That Greg had said something—anything, instead of giving pitying comfort as Mycroft mumbled about his virginity. That Greg thought about him as anything more than a library-bound bore and a charity case. That Greg thought about him at all anymore.</p><p class="p1">“Sherlock,” John said again. “Let Mycroft alone.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock rose in two elegant movements and began to put the instruments away. Then, suddenly, he turned back to Mycroft. “You are not as frigid as you pretend. It’s impossible. You make yourself look foolish by clinging to it ever more tightly. You might as well just—knock it off.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft made a choked sound of derision. John, seeing the fruitlessness of intervention, sighed and left the room. Mycroft said, “Are you speaking from experience?”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock swallowed. His eyes flicked to the door through which John had just exited.“The only difference between us, brother, is that I am not afraid to look foolish. You live in fear of it, mortal fear, and it will ruin your life if you let it. You’ll rot in that college.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was gathering his coat.</p><p class="p1">“Talk to Lestrade!” Sherlock bellowed. “He’s making me sick with all his longing!” As Mycroft left the house he could dimly hear him add, “And for christ’s sake have a cigarette.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was starting the car when John ran out, arms wrapped around himself in the cold. Unwillingly Mycroft rolled down the window.</p><p class="p1">John, breathing hard, said, “I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p1">“You don’t have to apologize for my brother. It’s not your responsibility to control his behavior.”</p><p class="p1">John huffed. “No, I suppose not. Look, Mycroft—it’s not my place. I don’t know if you and Greg had a falling out, or what. I can’t tell you what to do. But I think he…” John hesitated and went on. “I think he’s thinking about you. I’ll just say that.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt suddenly, absurdly, like he could cry. The statement couldn’t be true, and how would John know anyway? He should have been angry, not near tears. He swallowed hard against the feeling. “That lays his moods rather powerfully at my door,” he said stiffly. “I cannot help but guess it is an over-attribution of power to me. Greg has many friends.”</p><p class="p1">John shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know. I just—alright, Mycroft. Drive safe.” He turned back toward the house without waiting for a goodbye.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Mycroft bought the gum the next day, but he didn’t do anything about it yet. Only wrapped it in brown paper, addressed it to its intended recipient, and carried it around in his briefcase with him, between his iPad and a thin stack of student papers. Every time he touched it by mistake, he thought of Greg saying, <em>Will you go somewhere with me</em>? And then, <em>Whether you quit smoking or not is none of my concern. </em>He didn’t know how to reconcile these two statements. This despite the fact that analyzing mysterious pieces of text was supposed to be his specialty.</p><p class="p1">King’s College and Corpus Christi are only minutes apart, on the same street, and each time Mycroft passed King’s, the tourists queueing and the spires of the chapel soaring into the air and the placard with its picture of Greg conducting superimposed over a logo, he cursed his own failures of bravery. But then, like most good things that had ever happened to him, it was taken out of his hands.</p><p class="p1">Thursday evening, headed home after a late department meeting, he nearly ran into Greg Lestrade on the pavement outside the King’s College gates. Greg stepped back neatly to prevent this from occurring. “Mycroft,” he said, and he was smiling.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft experienced the rise and disappearance of dread in one single shaky moment. “Hello,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“Are you well?”</p><p class="p1">“I—yes, quite well. Are you—?”</p><p class="p1">It was an unseasonably warm day and Greg was wearing his leather jacket, as of old, over a jumper and jeans. His hair was flat and without product, suggesting that he’d just run into his office to grab something he’d forgotten. Greg often had this atmosphere about him, like he was constantly in motion between multiple places that were all hospitable to him. He was the sort of person who’d left a scarf or a book at any number of friends’ or lovers’ houses, and was struggling, with good humored disorganization, to recover them all. It was… perversely charming. “I’m very well indeed,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”</p><p class="p1">They stood there on the pavement for a moment, looking at each other. Mycroft was at sea. Greg did not seem rushed to speak or to leave him. Finally, Mycroft found his feet. “I have something for you, actually. I’m sorry I didn’t, um, deliver it sooner. I’m sorry I haven’t been—in touch, more regularly.”</p><p class="p1">“More regularly,” Greg said, biting down on a smile.</p><p class="p1">“I—well—I’m not the best at being transparent about—” Mycroft was blushing and stuttering, here on the street as dons and students streamed by.</p><p class="p1">Greg, taking pity, interrupted. “Mycroft. What do you have for me?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft nodded gratefully and reached into his bag. He found something about the neatly wrapped package soothing, like he’d prepared outlined notes.</p><p class="p1">Greg took the parcel and glanced at Mycroft, then ripped it open without asking first. When he saw the nicotine gum, he threw his head back and laughed, for a long time, so loudly that people walking by noticed. “It’s perfect,” he said. “I didn’t want to break down and buy it but clearly I’m struggling.”</p><p class="p1">“The same could be said of me,” Mycroft admitted. He tugged up the sleeve of his blazer to reveal the nicotine patch he wore.</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed another laugh. “Two peas in a pod,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had forgotten, during his self-imposed isolation, how easy it was to talk to Greg. During their separation he had remembered only his own abjection, awkwardness, painful and unreturned desire. He had forgotten this ease. Feverishly capitalizing on it, he said, “We could commiserate, if you have the time—have a drink together—sometime.”</p><p class="p1">Greg squinted up at him, shielding his eyes from the setting sun. “What are you doing right now?”</p><p class="p1">He insisted that the bars in central Cambridge were too crowded, and anyhow, weren’t they past all that? “If you don’t mind coming alone, I’ll dash into Sainsbury’s,” he said, and then proceeded to do that.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt an immense pleasure, not at all tainted by the accompanying awkwardness and stress, in trailing Greg around a crowded 5:30pm Sainsbury’s. Greg talked incessantly, describing a harrowing faculty meeting and fundraising event and his plans for upcoming concerts. Mycroft could only hear him half the time, and was overwhelmed by dodging other shoppers and the blaring pop music and the over-bright displays of food and by Greg’s energy. He was nearly dancing in the aisles, chattering about the right wine to garner Mycroft’s approval (as if it were a thing he still needed to garner) and whether Mycroft ate meat (he did).</p><p class="p1">Although it was overwhelming, Mycroft could not pretend he was not happy to be there with him, doing a task that bespoke casual weeknight intimacy. It was hard not to imagine doing the shopping together in a far legitimate and routine way, Greg’s hand coming to rest on his hip as they waited to check out. Pausing between aisles to ask, “I’ve forgotten, did we need olives?” Closeness, intimacy, sharing a fridge. He had never particularly thought to want it before. It seemed palpable and beautiful to him now, watching Greg peruse the lettuces.</p><p class="p1">Greg insisted upon paying for the groceries, saying that he’d chucked in far too many household staples to let Mycroft contribute. They walked the fifteen minutes to Greg’s flat with a bag each. Greg unlocked the door and said, “Now, it’s not clean—” and then pushed in with equanimity. It fascinated Mycroft that he was so comfortable sharing his home in this careless, unplanned way.</p><p class="p1">“Nonsense,” Mycroft said, and nearly gasped when he saw the flat. It was a fairly new construction, on the fifth floor, and one narrow wall in the kitchen was a single pane of glass, looking out over the gardens of Clare College. The kitchen, living room, and dining room all comprised one moderately sized room, lit in dusty orange by the sunset. There were dishes piled in the sink and onion skin littering one spot on the floor under a hanging basket of fruit and vegetables. There was a sagging leather couch, evidently ancient, and a coffee table with mug rings on it. There was a table in one corner with a record player on it and a stack of records underneath. There was a tall bookshelf of novels and musical scores, and a large framed photograph, clearly a gift from someone else, of Greg in tux and tails, his face intense and profoundly young, mid-conducting. “Oh, that,” Greg said when he saw Mycroft studying it. “How is it even possible to be 25? I thought I knew everything. Who put me in charge of a choir?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt something more dangerous than lust: it was affection, and intimate knowledge. “Because they knew the maestro you would become,” he said quietly.</p><p class="p1">Greg gave a big <em>ha!</em> “Stop that and come open this wine,” he said. His wine key was absolute rubbish, but Mycroft made it work. He handed a glass to Greg, who muttered, “ta,” and sipped from his own. Greg began to pick thyme sprigs from the package he’d bought for the chicken. Mycroft was about to say something predictable and flat, like, <em>I didn’t know you could cook</em>, but Greg saved him. “You didn’t say whether you liked the Duruflé.”</p><p class="p1">He bit his lip, remembering that night. Before it had gone wrong with his ill-timed sharing, he’d felt so <em>safe </em>in the belly of that requiem, swallowed up in sound. “I love Duruflé,” he said. “It was… absorbing. I felt absorbed.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s good, right?” Greg smiled, his head bowed over the cutting board.</p><p class="p1">“Mm. I would have liked to see you play the starring role at the organ.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed and glanced up, chef’s knife in hand. “Don’t flirt,” he said, his voice light.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blushed furiously. Of course that sounded like flirting. He’d only said it because it was true. “I—” He couldn’t speak.</p><p class="p1">Greg saved him once again. “Do you know what we’re doing for the next concert?”</p><p class="p1">“No, I can’t say I do.”</p><p class="p1">“Well guess, then. It’s spring, easter’s coming up, and given what you know of me…”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft wanted to say, <em>How do you expect me to think straight and make an educated guess about classical music while you’re standing there in your jumper making me dinner? I’ve lost every bit of higher order thinking I’ve ever had</em>. But Mycroft was good at coming up with answers quickly. “Given what I know of you, I would say… oh, a Bach Passion. One of the Passions.”</p><p class="p1">Greg grinned, very pleased. He wagged his knife in Mycroft’s direction. “But which?”</p><p class="p1">“Keeping in mind your taste for juvenilia, I would guess the St. John. That was the first, right?”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed again, surprised. “Where did you come from, honestly? Are you sure you’re a classics professor and not a musicologist?”</p><p class="p1">“Fairly sure.”</p><p class="p1">“And what do you mean, juvenilia?”</p><p class="p1">“Ah—that’s only a supposition. You tolerate Sherlock. You performed his work.”</p><p class="p1">Greg slid a pan of carrots into the oven to roast, and stepped back from the bench. It was warm in the flat, and he pulled off his jumper, momentarily flashing a bit of toned, hairy stomach. With the jumper off, he straightened the grey T-shirt he wore underneath, which was stretched neatly over his shoulders and chest. There were faint shadows of sweat in the armpits and one little ridge of the waistband of his pants was visible above his jeans. Mycroft forgot everything he knew about music. His insides felt compressed. He could hardly swallow.</p><p class="p1">Greg turned back to the hob, mercifully missing this reaction. “Well, to be strictly honest, I’m always bound to perform the composing fellow’s original work. That’s a part of the choir policy. But I would have anyway, in this case. Didn’t you think it sounded good?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft, his eyes glued to the way Greg’s shoulders and back made his T-shirt hardly touch him between the shoulder blades, tried to catch his breath. “I—don’t know. He’s my little brother. It’s difficult to get any distance.”</p><p class="p1">“Well. You know he’s a genius.” Greg turned in time to see Mycroft make a face. He huffed. “We don’t have to talk about Sherlock.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft sighed. “It’s not that—there’s just nothing to say. He is brilliant, as you say. I have spent every day of my life terrified about his wellbeing, and he drives me mad, but he’s brilliant.”</p><p class="p1">Greg clearly looked jolted by this. But he didn’t rush to speak. He sipped his wine, and then went over to the record player. “Do you mind? Sometimes choir people want absolute silence outside of rehearsal, but other times I’ve got to have something.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course.” Mycroft was expecting some sort of experimental classical music he’d never heard of, but the record Greg put on was Tracy Chapman, her voice low and sonorous enough that Greg’s melded with hers when he sang along, on the same octave. He had, of course, a devastating singing voice, soft and unaffected and true. Mycroft’s toes curled in his shoes.</p><p class="p1">Greg had finished prepping the chicken, and slid it into the oven alongside the carrots. “You don’t have to say why you worry about Sherlock, you know. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”</p><p class="p1"><em>Ah, but that’s the trouble. I’d tell you everything. I’d give you it all. </em>“Sherlock has been troubled—had problems with drugs. He’s sober now. That and his being Sherlock. Easier, with John being around. But I don’t—I know that. I only say what I like.”</p><p class="p1">Greg set a timer for the chicken. “I didn’t know that, about the drugs. But it makes sense, on some level, don’t you think? To be that brilliant, to hear whole cantatas in your head… it can’t be easy.”</p><p class="p1">Greg did not know that Mycroft had been labeled in some of the ways his brother had, that he had whole swaths of classical philosophy memorized, that he’d published his first work of scholarship at twenty-four. Mycroft wanted to keep things this way. “No,” he said, “I can’t imagine it is. Nothing is easy for Sherlock. Nor does he make it easy for us.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s very true.” Greg came to lean one hip against the benchtop, his wine glass at his mouth. “As you said, you were responsible for watching over him, when he was here as a teenager. That must have been… harrowing.” He smiled, but his eyes were serious.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt profoundly seen by this man. It was indeed harrowing, and pleasurable, in equal measure. “Yes,” he said. “I gave myself over to it, to the anxiety of it. Probably as a way to avoid focusing on my own concerns. I fretted over him, and I read, researched… It was not the most traditional undergraduate experience. It has made me a rather joyless sort of person, I’m afraid. Though I can’t blame Sherlock for that.”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned deeply, put down his wine glass. “Oi.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft, afraid he’d revealed too much, said nothing.</p><p class="p1">Greg sighed. “I wish I had the right credentials, that if I told you you were wonderful, you would believe me.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was gobsmacked. He blinked at him, wordless.</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed sadly. “See? I don’t. You won’t believe me.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s not—<em>you</em>—”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, I think it probably is.” Greg sounded very tired. “But still. This is—I’m not the most eloquent person, Mycroft, and I don’t know any mysterious Latin at all besides dona nobis pacem, and I hope this doesn’t stress you out, but I—missed you, when we weren’t talking. I. Well I worried about it. </p><p class="p1">“That’s—that’s very kind.” Mycroft worried the hem of his suit jacket with his fingertips, unable to believe what he was hearing. Greg, the most socially skilled, well-liked, and prestigious person he knew. John had been right. <em>I think he’s thinking about you. </em></p><p class="p1">“I wouldn’t want to put any pressure on you, but I—like it better when we’re friends. Is that alright?”</p><p class="p1"><em>Friends. Friends, then. He knows that I feel—and he wants to make it clear what sort of affiliation he’d like. He wants to have dinner with me—as friends—as long as it’s clear that I’ll remain in that category. </em>Mycroft nodded, his head spinning. It was more than he had ever hoped for, to be a bona fide friend of Greg Lestrade, and yet he felt like he’d been punched. “I’d like that,” he said, his voice strangled. He cleared his throat. “Don’t learn Latin. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s a dead language.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed, but it sounded a little hollow. “Then why have you learned it?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft gulped at his wine. He went to stand at the window, and watched the light die over the gardens, the arborvitaes casting shadows that lengthened and lengthened until they fell and disappeared. “Oh,” he said. “I’ve always felt at home among dead things.”</p><p class="p1">Greg had begun to cut the crusty sourdough loaf he’d bought. He laid aside some slices to eat with dinner, brought the heel over to Mycroft, and tore it in two. He handed one half over and began to eat the other himself. “Well, you’re alive,” he said, careless and sure, with a confidence that seemed to make it so. He bit down on the bread and a few crumbs fell; he brushed them away absently. “Anyway, speaking of which, you never told me what that Latin phrase was that you told me, the first time we had drinks. Avide—I can’t remember.”</p><p class="p1">The crust of the bread shattered in Mycroft’s mouth, sour and fresh. It tasted so good that he was momentarily overwhelmed. He swallowed and then said, “<em>Avide audimus</em>.”</p><p class="p1">“And what does it mean?” Greg had already resumed his lightness, smiling and sing-songing his way through teasing. He looked so handsome there, barefoot and sweat-stained in his messy kitchen, that it defied belief.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could not help but smile too. He would be this man’s friend. He would get to talk to him, to be near to him. This would be enough. “It means,” he said, “‘we listen eagerly.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As if it was not clear that I know truly nothing about classics, the Latin here comes from the Raven Cycle, loll.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It's finally Bach!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know if you spot the very small reference to mydwynter's life-ruining Memoranda of Understanding series, which is the inspiration for all my fics! </p><p>Fic playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2su2fXpucL5isNb0X1CYSF?si=joHuMaFqRyuY5OMk6s76Fg</p><p>Thanks to everyone who has recommended music and classical references for this story! I really appreciate the feedback.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Being friends with Greg Lestrade turned out to involve a lot of walks. After the first few, Mycroft felt brave enough to instigate these themselves, and they would arrange by text to meet outside Greg’s flat, nearer to the edge of the town. Unlike Oxford, Cambridge ends, and ends abruptly. They walked through a few quiet streets and then across the Cam on a small footbridge and then they were in rambling fields, the trees budding and daffodils coming up. They would walk for an hour or more like this, often in the last hour before it got dark. There were companionable silences, from time to time, but for the most part they were in frequent conversation, giving long monologues and calling attention to the smallest of sights: a flower, a crumbling stone cottage, a scarlet-colored bird. Walking relaxed Mycroft: the fresh air, the rhythm of the movement, the lack of eye contact. Perhaps Greg had known this, and orchestrated it. In any case, he passed many happy hours this way, listening to Greg talk about Vienna and Washington DC and London. The boy he’d followed to Birmingham at 17 because he could play the guitar. The Punjabi restaurant in Georgetown that he’d sat up with friends in till two in the morning. Coming out to his parents, which had been a disaster. The first time he’d conducted in the Duomo in Florence.</p><p class="p1">Over time, Mycroft began to tell stories too, though his were, of course, more humble. The time he’d seen Mary Renault read at Cambridge as an undergraduate. The conferences he’d attended in Beijing and Reykjavik. The time Sherlock had picked up a violin, aged 9, and played Mozart without missing a note. “He <em>was </em>Mozart,” Mycroft said, “or at least everyone treated him that way. And I was—”</p><p class="p1">“Nannerl,” Greg said at the exact same time Mycroft did. They both laughed, surprised. But then Greg’s face grew serious. “That must have been very lonely.”</p><p class="p1">Of course it had been. This did not need to be said. “Don’t <em>extract,</em>” Mycroft chided, hiding a smile.</p><p class="p1">“Extract?!”</p><p class="p1">“Squeeze the pulp out of me. Make me talk.”</p><p class="p1">Greg gave a <em>ha! </em>“Why on earth would I want that? Why on earth would I want to learn about you?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s eyebrows rose. “I honestly have no idea.”</p><p class="p1">“Ah, Mycroft.” Greg sighed, grand and expansive. He lightly clapped his hand over Mycroft’s shoulder and shoulder blade, sending a frisson of shocked heat through him. “You’re the stupidest.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, the stupidest?” There was joy rising in Mycroft like panic.</p><p class="p1">“I have every bit as much a doctorate as you do, sir, and I say you’re the stupidest.”</p><p class="p1">“Your reservations have been recorded. Watch—don’t trod in the mud.”</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">There were other parts of the friendship that made less straightforward sense, but he appreciated these too. They never went to a restaurant together for dinner, and Mycroft wondered if this might seem too date-like to Greg, if he wanted to make clear that this was an informal and unromantic relationship. They rarely watched television or movies together. But occasionally Greg would text at the last moment and say, “What are you doing now?”Invariably, nothing. Invariably, thinking about you. So he would go, and they would cook, or order takeaway, and listen to vinyl from the library or argue about opera. These were the happiest nights Mycroft could remember.</p><p class="p1">On one such night, Greg texted at 6:30. “What are you up to?” He asked.</p><p class="p1">“Reading a student’s new chapter,” he texted back. “We have a meeting first thing in the morning and I’m dreadfully behind on her work.” When Greg didn’t immediately reply, he added, “What are you doing?”</p><p class="p1">“Nothing in particular. Would you like to have a pint later?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft bit his lip. It felt good to have a legitimate reason to refuse him, to truly be too busy, even if only with work. At the same time it had been a long week and the thought of Greg’s company was extremely tempting. Finally he texted, “I’m afraid I’ll be here quite late.”</p><p class="p1">“In your office?” Greg asked.</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">There was a long minute before Greg replied again. “Would it be alright if I brought some work and some food? I promise to work quietly in my own corner.”</p><p class="p1">Reading this text sent Mycroft’s eyebrows toward his hair. Greg was being… pushy. In order to see him. It would, of course, be impossible to work with him nearby, but he did not have the strength to deny such a plaintive request. He texted, “Of course. You should know that Corpus Christi has a strict no-curry policy. I’ve tried to reason with them.”</p><p class="p1">Greg replied instantaneously. “Rather racist, but are we surprised? I’ll get something with a low aroma profile.” Then, “You’ll have to come to the gate to let me in.”</p><p class="p1">And Mycroft did, half an hour later. Greg was standing outside the college in a suit, holding a bag of sandwiches. He looked tired. “Aren’t you a sight?” He said when Mycroft poked his head out of the medieval front door of the college. Mycroft could feel his eyes on him, raking over his face and brown tweed suit, taking him in.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft said nothing, only ushered him into Corpus Christi for the first time. At this hour it was very quiet. Greg’s eyes snagged on the famous facade of the New Court. They went into Mycroft’s office, which by virtue of his endowed position had a massive three-paned window that overlooked the green. His green-shaded desk lamp shone on the papers there, and when the heating kicked on, the vent’s gusts of dusty warmed air fluttered a fabric wall-hanging of a bit of the Bayeux Tapestry. The room had no scent to Mycroft, who had spent the last 12 years of his life in it, but he knew it smelt of old books and old building—dust and damp and leather bindings. It was impeccably clean, as usual, but still Mycroft felt self-conscious as Greg surveyed it. “This is where you work?” He asked, his voice hushed.</p><p class="p1">“You work in the Chapel, don’t be impressed.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed. “Is that where you think I answer my email?”</p><p class="p1">“I know you to be very comfortable at an organ bench, so perhaps.”</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled, a genuine expression that made his fatigue more noticeable. “You’re never going to forgive me for not mentioning that sooner.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft sniffed, faux-offended. “I simply like to know which of my friends are organ virtuosos, that’s all.”</p><p class="p1">Greg sunk into the student chair across from Mycroft’s desk. His expression was complicated. “You got a lot of friends in that line of work?”</p><p class="p1">“Not at all.” Mycroft resumed his own high-backed rolling chair behind the desk, which he had inherited from the office’s previous occupant, the second son of a Viscount or something absurd like that, who’d written a score of books on Augustus. When he’d been given the office, a young don had told him, “You might be the first non-Tory to ever work in here.” Mycroft took this as a badge of honor. “What did you bring?”</p><p class="p1">“Sandwiches. I didn’t want to wake the ghosts with any strong smells.” He unpacked the bag and handed Mycroft’s customary order, a turkey club, across to him with a handful of napkins.</p><p class="p1">“At this hour, all the ghosts are awake anyhow.” He sat back, unwrapping his sandwich, and allowed himself a moment to study Greg. He didn’t understand why the man had wanted to come here, to annotate a William Byrd score in the narrow space of open desk Mycroft could afford, in silence. Mycroft was reading his best student’s chapter about enslavement and gender in the Roman Empire, making marginal notes with a fountain pen. The ivy was climbing the stone walls of the college outside the place where they were. No music was playing. If Greg had wanted comfort or diversion, he was surely capable of phoning up any number of young musical up-and-comers to seduce. Instead he was here, pilfering Mycroft’s post-it notes, shrugging out of his suit jacket to sit in his wrinkled white shirt, which had a small coffee stain on it. He looked terrifyingly, gorgeously human. Mundane like a promise. Headachey and middle-aged.</p><p class="p1">“Are you alright?” Mycroft asked him suddenly.</p><p class="p1">Greg looked up, a pen in his mouth. “Yes.” When Mycroft kept looking at him, he added, “I was feeling—sometimes it’s just nice to have company.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could not disagree.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had said that Bach makes things feel possible, and now that rather sentimental little edict was being used against him. “It’s Bach,” Greg said on the phone. “It’s the <em>St. John Passion. </em>That’s the sexy one. Promise you’ll come.”</p><p class="p1">“Believe me,” Mycroft said, taking the phone in his other hand so he could pour a glass of wine. “It’s not a reluctance to see the St. John Passion that’s slowing my hand.”</p><p class="p1">“Harhar. You’re not smoking, are you?”</p><p class="p1">“Not every time I pause in conversation is for a puff. It’s wine.”</p><p class="p1">“I suppose we really did switch vices.”</p><p class="p1">“Mm.”</p><p class="p1">“Alright, well, I’m on the case. It’s not <em>Bach </em>you’re avoiding. And I presume—I hope—it’s not me.”</p><p class="p1">“If I were avoiding you, I could not claim to be very good at it,” Mycroft said, trying to prevent too much affection from manifesting in his voice. They’d spent two evenings together that week, drinking and complaining about the LibDems, and now Greg had called.</p><p class="p1">“Alright, it’s not me, terrible at avoiding me, even when I pester. It must be the—what does Mycroft Holmes detest—the afterparty, then.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft grimaced. “You wound me.”</p><p class="p1">“It wouldn’t wound if it wasn’t true,” Greg sing-songed. “Oi, though. Come on. You promised.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s a lie.” <em>When did I start teasing back? When did I learn? Why does he want me at an afterparty full of musicians to flirt with and gloat about? Won’t I be in the the way? </em></p><p class="p1">“Imagine it was true, though. Imagine you promised.”</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh Gregory, I imagine things about you all the time. </em>“I’ll come, but I did not promise.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re making a new promise now, then.”</p><p class="p1">“If you like.”</p><p class="p1">“I need you there,” Greg said, and Mycroft’s heart stopped. “I need you to bring the gin I bought. I won’t be able to keep track of it myself. I bought my own Nolet, because you remember the last party, and the lord knows we can’t take chances. I can’t conduct the entire Passion and then drink <em>Beefeater’s </em>or something. We can’t take chances.”</p><p class="p1">“Lord knows we can’t,” Mycroft said, choking on his own stupid hope, and soon after they hung up the phone.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">King’s College Chapel was a lantern, soft yellow light gleaming through every bit of stained glass. Everyone crowded around Mycroft was the chancellor of something. He held his ticket in one hand and his briefcase in the other, which contained nothing but his house keys, wallet, and the bottle of Nolet that Greg had entrusted to him two days before. It felt like a promise. It felt like: <em>I’ll see you afterward. I can’t have a good time without meeting up with you first. </em></p><p class="p1">This promise reassured Mycroft as he stepped into the chapel once again and was confronted with its grandeur. Bach makes things possible, sure, but Bach also legitimizes things, formalizes them, as if to say: this is not practice anymore. The crowd inside the chapel was rife with tuxedos and philanthropic distinction and government officials. Mycroft was probably the least credentialed person in the room. Except, perhaps, John Watson, lovely man, in a gray suit, having already lost track of Sherlock. He put a program in Mycroft’s hand and said, “We don’t have to sit in the front, if you like. Sherlock says it makes him itchy.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock had, somewhat gamely, agreed to play the violin as a part of the pared-down quartet Greg had decided upon in collaboration with the orchestra. “I know you don’t like him underfoot,” Greg had quipped, grinning, as if Sherlock’s musical celebrity was not a boon to everyone involved.</p><p class="p1">Gratefully, Mycroft sat with John further back, in the fifth row or so. “Is Greg nervous?” John asked.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s heart skipped. It was the proprietary way John had asked it, the way he assumed that Greg’s moods were an area of Mycroft’s expertise. As if Mycroft had been there, fastening Greg’s bowtie, murmuring <em>break a leg</em>, instead of fretting over two different shirts alone in his flat with Radio 4 blaring. He frowned. “I wouldn’t have any idea,” he said, stiff and unfriendly. Then, unable to help it: “I highly doubt it, however.”</p><p class="p1">They had to wait a few moments to find out, as the chapel fell quiet and performers filed in. Greg was last of all, after every other group and soloist had been acknowledged. There was a little hush, and then there he was, walking briskly but proudly, as if to say, <em>Oh, don’t mind me. But thank you, thanks very much. </em>He turned to the audience, full of donors and dukes and chancellors, and bowed deeply. He was wearing his tails again, with a cummerbund this time, his bowtie slightly crooked. His dark grey hair was neat and smooth, his smile boyish. He was the most beautiful thing Mycroft had ever seen.</p><p class="p1">As Greg rose from his bow, his eyes scanned the audience abstractly. They snagged on Mycroft, who was staring back, and for a single moment the eye contact held, a firebrand of understanding, of privacy. Mycroft’s blood thrummed with it. Then, his grin ever-widening (certainly he did not look as severe as any musician of his prestige ought to), Greg whirled toward the altar. He turned to the string section, including Sherlock, looking both distinguished and squirmy beside the violist. At Greg’s signal, the strings began to play, fluid and foreboding like rising water, and then Greg pivoted and there was the choir, calling out in counterpunctal melodies, a rising eddy of sound that swirled to the top of the chapel. With active foreknowledge, Mycroft gave himself over to the music, and drowned in it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">When it ended at last, John sighed, shaking his head. “He really is amazing, isn’t he?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Mycroft agreed, perfectly content to know that they were talking about two different men.</p><p class="p1">They collected Sherlock—so exuberant that he was calm and nearly polite—before departing for the afterparty. This one was a larger, more official affair, with the entire choir and the rest of the performers invited, to be held at a donor’s rambling country pile 10 minutes outside of Cambridge. Mycroft had visited the house once before to make use of its estimable private library. Now, decidedly more out of his element, he clung to his briefcase and searched the crowd. He knew he had the right to seek out Greg—the gin in his bag had promised that—but it seemed absurd to ask for an audience of any length with the most in-demand person in the crowded foyer. <em>The trouble is, </em>he thought, stuffing his nervous hands into his pockets, <em>this is precisely what cigarettes were invented for. </em></p><p class="p1">In lieu of both boy and vice, he stuck close to John and accepted a glass of expensive and already half-flat champagne. John, who in a way both endearing and infuriating, could talk to anyone, had begun chatting to the fêted alto soloist, saying, “You don’t say. I had no idea the Passion was considered anti-Semitic.”</p><p class="p1">The alto rolled her eyes, presumably toward old Johann, with the exasperation and temperance one showed to an elderly uncle.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt absurd standing next to the affable and uninitiated John, who everyone instantly liked, and who had the wonderfully straightforward job of <em>medical doctor </em>to fall back upon, anecdotally speaking. He went in search of a bathroom, a project which turned into something of an architectural tour. He still hadn’t found Greg, although he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t really trying. There was a petulant part of him that thought, <em>let him find me. He’s given me this administrative task, let him seek </em>me<em> out</em>.</p><p class="p1">He was coming out of the loo when he nearly ran into a very tall man in a tuxedo he had never seen before. He was perhaps 40, a little younger than Mycroft, and had thick shaggy hair, dark blond, that covered the back of his collar. He had a kind of blunt, wide-set handsomeness, a Scandinavian arrangement of features and watery blue eyes. He was slenderer, with less masculine power, than Mycroft would have expected, but his hand, when he went to shake Mycroft’s, was massive and quite warm. “We have not met,” he said, in a barely-there German accent, polite and low-key, “But I believe I know who you are.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, you—you do?” Mycroft stuttered, even as he was beginning to piece it together himself. The face was reawakening a memory of internet research.</p><p class="p1">“You are Greg’s friend—is that right? Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">A thousand questions about the meaning of the phrase <em>Greg’s friend</em>—and the fact that he had been mentioned at all—filled Mycroft’s mind. “Yes, I am.”</p><p class="p1">“My name is Jan Meller,” he said, confirming a suspicion. “It is very good to meet you, Greg says very good things about you.”</p><p class="p1">He did not bother to explain that he had used to be married to Greg, that apparently his affair with a 25 year old oboist (“that means twink,” Greg had explained, half laughing, half aggrieved), had precipitated their divorce. Either this information was widely assumed or it was unflattering, so Jan Meller did not mention it.</p><p class="p1">“And about you,” Mycroft said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. What had Greg said about his ex? He was bohemian, charismatic, brilliant, slutty, generous, cold, mysterious? More or less all of that, if not in such a straightforward list. Mycroft, in a familiar way, felt intimidated. Somehow <em>slutty </em>seemed like the greatest compliment of them all. In any case, they were on friendly enough terms to smoke weed together whenever they were in the same place. Greg had left to the imagination whether they did anything else for old time’s sake too. “You live in Salzburg, is that right?”</p><p class="p1">Jan nodded. “I have been in England a great deal this winter. My choir has been touring. Just now I was in London, attending a conference, and Greg calls me and he says, there will be a concert at King’s of the St. John Passion, the first time I have conducted it, and since you like Cambridge so much, you should come and see! So I did.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled weakly. “I imagine our trains leave much to be desired, with comparison to Germany and Austria.” He had found trains a reliable topic of conversation with Europeans in the past.</p><p class="p1">Jan laughed. “I think that is true, although Cambridge is so very close to London, it was not difficult at all.” He was wearing a large, flashy signet ring on one hand, and Mycroft thought: <em>there are so many more kinds of gay than I knew. </em>He wondered again why Greg had really invited him to town. Was an easy shag what he was after? Mycroft had certainly never seen or heard again from the young man he’d seen with Greg at the restaurant on the Cam many weeks ago. He felt dizzy. He groped for conversation, utterly aware of the provincial way he looked, his awkward bookish demeanor, everything wretched—</p><p class="p1">Jan clapped him on the shoulder. “It is not my place to interfere,” he said, sending a fresh blade of anxiety through Mycroft, “but I do want to tell you not to play too fast and loose with Gregory. He is a very loving person, you know. I’m sure he has told you horror stories about me—they are all true, I can admit that. Well, I am being hypocritical then, because I do not like to see him get hurt.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had never been more confused. “I beg your pardon.”</p><p class="p1">Jan huffed, shaking his head. “You see? I shouldn’t get involved. I am not familiar with the details—he did not say anything he should not have, I promise. Only I got the sense that he—he does not know how you feel. He does not feel sure of it. Perhaps you wish to remain friends.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could not speak. The conversation had taken the most unexpected turn.</p><p class="p1">Jan’s face fell. “I’ve spoken out of turn. I’m sorry. I have the worst tendency to meddle in Greg’s affairs—not that he needs my help, he’s a very intelligent man. But I feel—responsible for him. We met each other when we were very young. He does not often speak so glowing. As he does about you, I mean. He glows.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt his world revolve on three or four axes simultaneously. He was trying to summon the wherewithal to demur, or to ask for clarification, or to flee, but all three eluded him. He was still trying to open his mouth when he heard a familiar voice coming through an open doorway.</p><p class="p1">“Oi, there you are, my <em>savior</em>, the preserver of the party himself, thank god.” Greg was still wearing his jacket, the bowtie having increased in crookedness, and he was flushed from the crowdedness of the party. He held an empty champagne flute in one hand. He was nearly at Mycroft’s side before he saw Jan. “Oh <em>Jesus</em>,” he said, startled. “Don’t lurk like that, Christ.”</p><p class="p1">“Dr. Lestrade,” said Jan, and bowed.</p><p class="p1">“What have you been—” Greg turned back to Mycroft and frowned at his face. “Are you alright?”</p><p class="p1">“I must be off,” Jan said, but nobody heeded him.</p><p class="p1">“I’ve got your gin,” Mycroft managed, feeling dizzier than ever.</p><p class="p1">“Let me get some glasses, and we’ll—well we’ll go outside, and get some air. Nobody else should get to share the good stuff anyhow, don’t you think?” Greg disappeared for a moment, leaving Mycroft to reel, and returned with two rocks glasses, a little bottle of soda water, and a bulge in his jacket pocket that Mycroft assumed was a lime. “Out, out,” he whispered, shooing him, and before long they had emerged on a side veranda of the country pile, which had a flat stone railing with an ashtray on it and little else. Greg set up his supplies there and began to bartend.</p><p class="p1">The cool air and quiet began to return Mycroft to his senses. He tried his best to put Jan’s enigmatic remarks away for now, to mull over at a later date. For the time being he relished being alone with Greg, here at this party where he was the guest of honor.</p><p class="p1">Greg turned at last, his face pale, and handed Mycroft a gin and soda. “I did not invite him to the afterparty, I promise you,” he said. “I have no idea how he got in. What did he say to you?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt a pulse of plain, uncomplicated affection. “Nothing of any consequence. We were merely making conversation. Lamenting the state of Southern Rail.”</p><p class="p1">Relief flashed in Greg’s expression. “I hope he didn’t—stress you out.”</p><p class="p1">“Certainly not,” Mycroft said, smiling at how well Greg knew him, the inevitability of his being “stressed out.” “He was perfectly cordial. He wanted to talk about how absolutely brilliant you were.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s face didn’t light up as much as he would have expected. “Ha! Not Jan, I think. I’m sure he noticed every little wrong downbeat and I <em>totally </em>forgot to cue the second aria, which was nearly a disaster—”</p><p class="p1">“Greg,” Mycroft interrupted, and a strange calm came over him. “You were brilliant. It was—gorgeous. Everybody was mad for it. Your skill and your leadership were very evident, I can tell you that. Even Sherlock has confirmed it.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, his face complicated. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was thick. “I’m sure it was alright. It’s hard not to get bogged down in the details of a thing like this. It’s so vast. And the platform so… visible.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s chest ached for him, seeming more vulnerable and unsure than he ever had. “I’m telling you,” he said quietly, “you were brilliant.”</p><p class="p1">“Well.” Greg turned to look out over the darkened landscape of the country garden. “If <em>you </em>say so.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. <em>He does not often speak so glowingly</em>, Jan had said. He could hardly breathe.</p><p class="p1">Greg sighed. “I’m glad it’s over. I feel such pressure, when it’s Bach. It was tremendous fun, of course, but god, I’m glad it’s over.” He sipped deeply from his own glass and turned over his shoulder toward Mycroft. “Where did you go?”</p><p class="p1">Unwillingly, Mycroft joined him at the railing. He was afraid for Greg to see his face, to see the desire that must be so transparently available there in his expression.</p><p class="p1">Greg glanced slyly at him. “I’ve never seen this suit.”</p><p class="p1">He’d never really commented on Mycroft’s clothes before. Mycroft wondered for the first time if Greg might be drunk.</p><p class="p1">“Well,” he said, the taste of gin and lime overpowering, “One must be kitted out for Bach.”</p><p class="p1">They looked at each other for a long moment, dimly illuminated by the house’s exterior lights. Greg’s face was all peaks and shadows, fatigue and satisfaction, but then there was something in his eyes that Mycroft could not help but identify. His heart was racing. The look fluttered, and Mycroft thought suddenly with extreme clarity: <em>He is looking at my mouth. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg peeled away from the railing, groaning, covering his face with his hands. It happened so quickly that Mycroft thought he had been suddenly afflicted with pain. “What is it?” He said, his voice thin. “What’s wrong?”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s back was turned to him, those coattails ridiculous in the darkness. He didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally he turned back. He smiled. “It’s nothing,” he said. His eyes fell from Mycroft’s face to the ground, almost shy. “It just became overwhelming. How much I want to kiss you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s mouth opened and no sound came out.</p><p class="p1">Greg massaged both hands over his face, rubbing harshly at his eyes. “But I think you might not want that. I don’t know. It’s—it’s fine.”</p><p class="p1">The terror of it—the possibility of having what you wanted—was unbearable. Mycroft could not breathe. The fear of it not being real. The chance of doing it wrong. The inevitability that it would end. The taste of Greg’s mouth—what his hands would feel like on Mycroft’s body—the noise of his breath. Mycroft was filled with desire and a strange, panicky repulsion. The need to flee intensified.</p><p class="p1">Greg watched all this play across his face and then closed his eyes. “I know,” he said. “It’s alright. I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p1">“Greg—” His voice was so hoarse it was hardly audible.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft, I said it’s alright. We don’t have to—nothing has to change. I won’t—mmf. I won’t.” He drained his drink. “God, I’m sorry.” He tapped the railing with both hands, as if in finality, and then whirled away, the way he would from nave to choir, where Mycroft was his audience, and his choir the rest of the darkened world. </p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warning: this fic is going to start exploring some tricky themes around queer sexuality, including the difficulty of knowing whether or not you want something. There will be some uncomfortable emotions and images! I promise nothing abusive or truly nonconsensual will happen in this story, which is still a love story. But a heads-up that this story thinks about the nature of consent, especially for queerness and self-discovery, as really hard to pin down! Everybody is very safe and cared for, however. </p><p>Thanks as always for your lovely comments, which have been such a boon in dark times (dry January/gestures at whole world). </p><p>Okay let's proceed with kissing!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Mycroft fell asleep the moment he laid down that night, and woke up before the sun. By six o’clock he was putting on his mack. He walked in light spring drizzle out of central Cambridge and toward the fields he’d so often tramped in with Greg.</p><p class="p1">He’d had so many mornings like this when Sherlock was using. Unable to even doze once he’d jolted awake in the early darkness, he’d wandered the streets of the city, learning each college’s walls, each high street shop and river bank, in an attempt to quiet his racing mind. This morning his head was full of Bach, the soprano crying, “<em>Herr! Herr!</em>” The chorus rising to lament the death of Christ.</p><p class="p1">And, of course, his head was full of Greg. There were images of his beauty as he conducted, or his surprise at seeing his ex, but largely Mycroft was captive to two consecutive expressions: desire in his face, and then embarrassment there, or grief. The second-most startling thing Mycroft had ever learned was that Greg Lestrade wanted to kiss him. The first-most, of course, was that Greg did not think Mycroft wanted to kiss <em>him.</em> He had long thought Greg’s ongoing ignorance impossible, thought his own desperation palpable in the air between them. The fact that Greg had never named or acted upon this evidence proved his lack of interest. But now—.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had always perceived nearly all his peers as more confident, more able than him, as if he lacked some form of social initiation they’d all shared. He was aware, at least intellectually, that this was a fallacy, and a narcissistic one. But still it shocked him to think that Greg of all people was insecure, could feel inadequate or unwanted. More shocking still was the thought that Mycroft himself could have brought this to bear.</p><p class="p1">He checked his phone for the hundredth time, finding nothing. It was still only eight o’clock. He decided to do something truly desperate; he went to Anthea’s house.</p><p class="p1">She was wearing a feather-trimmed robe, level of irony unclear, and she made him eat scrambled eggs on toast before asking why he’d come so early and unannounced. When the coffee was brewing, she said, “Man trouble, go on.”</p><p class="p1">She seemed surprised when Mycroft did not contest the prompt. He sighed and flattened his palms over his eyes.</p><p class="p1">“Oh jeez,” she said, “start at the end.”</p><p class="p1">He did. He told her everything, haltingly and out of order, and with as much fidelity as he could bear. When he finally circled back to “that’s when he said he wanted to—kiss me,” Anthea’s eyebrows shot up, and she smiled.</p><p class="p1">“Oh, you boys,” she said.</p><p class="p1">“But I—I couldn’t.”</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t kiss him? Mycroft!”</p><p class="p1">He buried his face in his hands. “Help,” he said into them.</p><p class="p1">Anthea’s advice was prosaic. Mycroft had to call Greg, had to confess his failure. <em>But, </em>he wanted to protest to her, <em>I’ve never kissed anyone. I don’t know how. </em></p><p class="p1">He did not need to vocalize this fear, apparently. She studied his face and then she said, “When you’re kissing the person you want to kiss, the rest is—inconsequential. Obviously. You dolt. Go. Make sure you tilt your head. Grab him by the shirt. Men love that, probably.”</p><p class="p1">“You wouldn’t know,” he pointed out.</p><p class="p1">“Well, neither would you,” she said, exasperated and fond. “Go, find out. Get out of my sight.”</p><p class="p1">This was the core of Mycroft’s problem, in all likelihood. His entire life he’d been contemplating the unlikely chance that he was worthy of romantic love. He should have been mastering <em>make sure you tilt your head</em>. But practical advice is the hardest kind.</p><p class="p1">He called Greg, and got his voicemail. Determined not to let his bravery flag, he went straight to his flat and rang the bell. There was no answer. Mycroft had no idea whether Greg was screening his calls and visitors or whether he was asleep, dead to the world. In every other version of himself he’d assume the former, assume Greg never wanted to see him again after last night’s accidental reaction. But he knew he’d let cowardice rule him long enough.</p><p class="p1">He sent a text that said, “Call me when you get this.”</p><p class="p1">Greg did not call until 6 pm. “Mycroft?” He said, his voice small and unfamiliar.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s heart was in his throat. “I wondered if you would come to my flat tonight,” he said, “and have a glass of wine. If you’d be willing to stay that long. Largely I wanted to—apologize—for last night.”</p><p class="p1">There was a small silence. “That’s not necessary.”</p><p class="p1">“It <em>is </em>necessary. And I’d like to.”</p><p class="p1">Greg agreed, however reluctantly, and Mycroft set to cleaning his flat. At the last moment, hearing the bell, he stripped off his suit jacket, afraid of looking too buttoned-up or pompous. He had lit candles and opened the wine to breathe, feeling both foolish and determined. When he saw Greg, every bit of his determination failed him. But something warmer, more instinctive, rose up in its place. “Hello,” he said. “Come in.”</p><p class="p1">Greg had a vague air of hangover about him, with circles under his eyes. He had clearly just showered. He met Mycroft’s gaze, nervous, and then turned to look at the flat. “I’ve never been here before,” he said. “It’s lovely.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft made a low scoffing sound. “It’s rather hobbit-like, I fear. A little dark. More books than windows. I’ve never been particularly adept at interior design, and I don’t have many guests—”</p><p class="p1">Greg was shaking his head. “Damn you,” he said, fondly. “There’s nobody I know who sees themselves less clearly than you. It’s ridiculous.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blinked. “I don’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">Greg had roamed to the far end of the sitting room, peeking down the narrow corridor, and he returned down to stand close to Mycroft. “Every time I see you,” he said, “the first five or six things you say are an apology. It’s not till I can get you to relax a little bit, start teasing me, tell me what you <em>actually </em>think. God, it’s <em>work</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt his spine wither inside him. “I’m—sorry. I hate knowing that I’ve been a chore for you.”</p><p class="p1">Greg had been halfway through a sip of his wine, but now he put it down so he could groan, loud and harsh with exasperation. “<em>Fuck</em>,” he drawled, a strange exclamation to hear from someone who had been so recently at the helm of a two hour sacred work in a foreign language. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to tell you that it <em>wasn’t ever a chore. </em>That I liked doing it. That I just wish you’d stop doing the apology bit and get to <em>you</em>, this person who I—.” He stopped abruptly.</p><p class="p1">“Last night—” Mycroft began, unsteady but resolved.</p><p class="p1">“I was drunk,” Greg interrupted, “I shouldn’t have said—it all got away from me.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked down at the wine glass in his hand. “I don’t think you were very drunk at all,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want you to think that what you said was—unwelcome. Far—ahem, far from it. I was merely. Overwhelmed.”</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft.” His voice was hoarse.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked up at him suddenly. This Greg, in weathered jeans and old T-shirt, vulnerable and unprepared, was his favorite. It still seemed impossible that this Greg wanted him. “I think you should kiss me,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">He took a shaky sip of wine. “I wanted you to kiss me last night, if I’m truthful. But I was afraid. I gave you the impression of a rejection. For that I think my apology is quite warranted.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, utterly confused. Still he came to stand closer, their bodies inches apart. Mycroft could smell his shampoo. “You really want me to?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. “I wanted it before last night, if I am to be perfectly honest.”</p><p class="p1">Greg let out a long, stuttering breath, so powerful that Mycroft could feel it on his face. “<em>Mycroft</em>,” he breathed, and if Mycroft wasn’t imagining it, there was longing there.</p><p class="p1">“Please,” Mycroft said, and his eyes fell closed.</p><p class="p1">Greg took another step forward, so their shirt-fronts were touching. The warmth of Greg’s body soaked into Mycroft’s chest. Carefully, so carefully, Greg rested his hands on either side of Mycroft’s waist. Fear tugged through his nervous system. When Greg spoke again, his voice was very close. “You’re trembling,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know how—I’ve never—.” Mycroft swallowed.</p><p class="p1">“I know,” Greg soothed. “We don’t have to.”</p><p class="p1">An involuntary little whine came from Mycroft’s throat. “I <em>want you to</em>,” he breathed. He felt his fingers shake as he reached up to touch Greg’s shoulders, shocked that he was allowed, shocked at the solid warmth, the realness, of them.</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands smoothed around Mycroft’s waist to hold him around the small of his back, fingers soft and sure through the thin fabric of his starched button-up. Mycroft felt both trapped and cradled, warm and frozen on the spot. Greg whispered, “You shouldn’t feel pressured—shouldn’t force yourself, if you’re not ready—.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft huffed with frustration and need, and then, with a sudden surge of bravery, he dipped his head forward and kissed Greg’s mouth. A brush, then a press of lips, then slick warmth when they both instinctively parted their lips. Mycroft could have called to mind none of Anthea’s practical advice, but still he tilted his head. It turned out that this was not difficult.</p><p class="p1">It was far too undifficult. Greg gasped into the kiss and tugged Mycroft impossibly closer. Mycroft’s fingers, emboldened by this reaction, slipped up over Greg’s shoulders and cupped the back of his neck, bristly with short hairs. Male and warm and human. He felt the molten heat of arousal flow. <em>You are kissing Greg Lestrade, and he is kissing you. </em>Everything was hot and cramped and itchy and too intense. Greg’s <em>teeth</em>—.</p><p class="p1">Overcome, Mycroft pulled out of the kiss. They were both gasping for air. Greg’s forehead was pressed inelegantly to Mycroft’s cheekbone, sweat growing between them. “<em>Fuck</em>,” Greg breathed. “Worse than I imagined.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft tried to bolt away, chastened, ashamed, and Greg held him roughly in place. “<em>Wors</em>e,” he growled. “As in, I’ve got it worse for you than I even knew. Shit. Mycroft.” He was clinging; he was holding on.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had just had his first kiss.</p><p class="p1">He buried his face in Greg’s shoulder, and Greg’s hand clamped over the back of his neck, holding him close. He tried to breathe.</p><p class="p1">“You’re shaking.” Greg’s voice was low and rumbly in his ear. “Are you alright?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft lifted his head and kissed him again, so forcefully that Greg took a steadying step backwards. Mycroft held Greg’s face in his hands and kissed him with all his might, opening his mouth to let Greg’s tongue invade, giving himself over to it. Greg’s hands bunched in his shirt. They were pressed together from face to waist, friction growing between their lips and hands and the fabric of their clothes. With a kind of academic clarity, Mycroft thought, <em>We are two men. We’re both men, and we’re allowed to—we both want it—</em>and something about the unmitigated queerness of it turned him on so much he felt dizzy. He knew he was getting hard, was past just <em>getting </em>hard, but he couldn’t focus, couldn’t worry, was too absorbed in the slide and press of Greg’s mouth.</p><p class="p1">Then, with a low repressed moan, a little click in his throat, Greg wrapped his arms around Mycroft’s back and pressed them together. Mycroft felt the graze of Greg’s erection before he remembered his own. They were both hard. He felt a heady whirl of arousal before fear crept in, and abruptly the kiss broke. He reared back, panting. “I’m sorry—” he gasped. “I can’t—.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hand was already stretched out in comfort, the way you’d reach out to a wounded animal. “It’s alright—. It’s alright.”</p><p class="p1">They were finally far apart enough for Mycroft to study him. Something about the way he looked—his eyes dark and hooded, hair mussed and mouth pink, was even better evidence of his desire than his erection had been. Mycroft felt want and anxiety at war. .</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed.” Greg ran a hand over his wild hair. “One thing at a time.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes—yes, if you don’t mind.” Suddenly the reality of the situation made itself manifest to Mycroft, the bizarre happenstance of his fantasy become real, and he started to laugh. He heard the hysterical edge to it, its breathy pitch, but he couldn’t stop. He felt a bead of sweat roll between his shoulder blades and laughed harder. He braced his hands on his knees to catch his breath.</p><p class="p1">“Darling,” Greg said, halting.</p><p class="p1">“I’m—ha—alright, I just—.” He gestured to the room around them. “I didn’t think it was possible. I have—.” Mycroft struggled to explain his feelings without giving too much away. “I’ve wanted this,” he said inelegantly. “A lot.”</p><p class="p1">A smile that could fill the King’s College Chapel stole over Greg’s face. “You’re beautiful,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t.”</p><p class="p1">“God, Mycroft.” Greg reached out to touch him and stopped himself. “I didn’t think you wanted—I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”</p><p class="p1">His laughter subsided, Mycroft rubbed his eyes like a tired child. “I always feel uncomfortable,” he mumbled, and Greg huffed a laugh.</p><p class="p1">“You’ll learn,” he said, a promise in his voice that made Mycroft’s arousal resurface.</p><p class="p1">“There’s no reason for you to want <em>me,</em>” he said. “You could have anyone, and I am so—I know nothing, and would need to—” He swallowed audibly. “Would need to go very slow. You could have any man in the world.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was smiling at him, tired and amazed. “Too bad,” he said, “that’s just too bad. For them.”</p><p class="p1">“For them?”</p><p class="p1">“Not for us.” Tentatively Greg stepped forward and kissed him again, a sweet, slow caress. He said, his lips still brushing the corner of Mycroft’s mouth, “Do you want to stop?”</p><p class="p1">There was a part of Mycroft that truly did; he was wrung out with adrenaline and anxiety, every system in overdrive, and his instinct was to burrow somewhere private to regroup and analyze. The other part of Mycroft was thinking about the scent of Greg’s skin, the texture of his fingertips, the way his hands would feel put to use another way—. He could drown like this. Thousands of years of going to war over sex made sense in a decisively non-academic way. “No,” he whined, and kissed Greg, over and over. Their hands gradually grew bold, moved lower. Eventually Mycroft’s hands had roamed, without his permission, to the lush firmness of Greg’s arse, and, startled by his own daring, he pulled back and admitted, “Yes.”</p><p class="p1">Greg stepped back immediately, his face solicitous. His erection was tenting the fly of his jeans. His face was flushed, rubbed raw by Mycroft’s stubble, since he’d shaved so early that morning. He didn’t speak for a long time; he was studying Mycroft. Some unknowable emotion was brewing on his face. Then he said, “Drink your wine.”</p><p class="p1">Blazing with arousal, Mycroft obeyed. Greg did the same.</p><p class="p1">A tempestuous silence grew. They did not look at each other. After a while, Greg asked, “Do you want me to leave?”</p><p class="p1">“No,” Mycroft said quickly, though he wasn’t at all certain.</p><p class="p1">“Because if you need time—”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Please</em>,” he bit out. “Please don’t treat me like I’m fragile, or I don’t understand what I’m doing, I’m embarrassed enough as it is—.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s face grew sober. He approached Mycroft again and kissed the shirt over his collarbone, slid one hand down his arm to hold his hand. “You’re white as a sheet,” he said. “I’m concerned about you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft closed his eyes, let a shudder run its course through him.</p><p class="p1">“I couldn’t forgive myself if I made you feel—” Greg broke off.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was thinking of the endless willing young men, men with rainbow lapel pins and sexual experience, who Greg could be with right now, getting off, having fun, instead of standing here torturing himself because Mycroft could not bring himself to smile, or to unzip his trousers. “Feel <em>what</em>,” he spat.</p><p class="p1">“Afraid.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blinked at him.</p><p class="p1">“Nervous, sure, or uncertain, but I don’t want you to feel afraid, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">He tried to slow his heart rate with careful breaths. “What if fear, for me, is a necessary prerequisite? To—sex.”</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands were gentle and reverent, petting Mycroft’s chest through his shirtfront, coming to rest there. “I’m not thinking about sex right now. You haven’t <em>taken sex away from me.” </em></p><p class="p1">It was a blunt way to describe Mycroft’s exact anxiety. “No?”</p><p class="p1">Greg shook his head, his breath shuddery. “Were you afraid when we had drinks together at the Seven Swans?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Mycroft said automatically, truthfully.</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, then frowned. “But you came.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“And you kissed me.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes. I said, fear is a <em>necessary</em>—.”</p><p class="p1">“I heard you,” Greg interrupted. “Alright.” He took a long moment to think. They were still standing very close to each other. Finally he said, “You don’t want me to treat you like you’re fragile.”</p><p class="p1">“Thank you, no.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ll make some executive decisions for us, then.”</p><p class="p1">“That would be very much appreciated.”</p><p class="p1">Greg cupped one hand over Mycroft’s thin cheek, and for a moment Mycroft fancied he could see something like <em>ardor </em>in his face. “Cheers. I’m going to kiss you one more time, and then we’re going to go down the street to the ramen place and have some noodles. And then I’m going to go home.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft nodded. He felt emptied out, stripped free of himself.</p><p class="p1">“Does that plan suit?”</p><p class="p1">“Ye-yes. Please don’t, er, skimp on the kiss.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed, and for the first time in several minutes, genuine joy came into his eyes. “Never,” he promised, and leaned in to capture Mycroft’s mouth. </p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s sleep that night was shallow and thin, and he awoke at five o’clock in the morning, his cock rigid and throbbing. There had been no dreams, but still his body knew something, maybe something he didn’t.</p><p class="p1">He got up at once, knowing that to lie in bed would only make the anxiety (and the erection) worse. He made the bed, he cleaned his teeth, he took a shower. He checked his phone. He had a text message from Greg, received at 11:15 last night, long after they’d said good night. “I can’t stop smiling,” it said.</p><p class="p1">How could he respond? <em>I can’t get the feeling of dread out of my chest. </em>He badly wanted a cigarette.</p><p class="p1">He tried to contemplate breakfast and decided his stomach was roiling too much. He went back to bed. Thought about Greg’s reaction when he had his first slurp of boiling hot spicy ramen, his eyes bright and alarmed, already laughing at himself. The sliver of seaweed caught in his teeth. Mycroft hadn’t been able to bear telling him it was there, and when they’d kissed goodnight, he’d felt it with his tongue.</p><p class="p1">Thought about Greg saying, <em>I don’t want you to feel afraid</em>, which was such pie-in-the-sky handsome-man thinking that maybe the whole enterprise was doomed. Thought that feeling such a heavy weight of dread in his chest perhaps meant that he shouldn’t begin, shouldn’t bother.</p><p class="p1">Thought about Greg whining, <em>Mycroft</em>, with evident, unvarnished neediness in his voice. His hands, greedy and barely self-controlled. His cock hard in his trousers because Mycroft was touching him. Mumbling, <em>oh it’s worse than I thought. I’m worse than I thought. </em></p><p class="p1">Mycroft slipped his chilly fingers under the waist of his trousers. He should have turned on the heat. He should have used more tongue, should have dropped to his knees and—. Should have said, <em>I have wanted you for as long as I’ve known you so needless to say I’m a bit nervous. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands on his face, holding him still. It had frightened him; it had activated a premodern instinct for flight that pinged his fear center. It had aroused him beyond belief.</p><p class="p1">He rubbed at his cock, nearly fully hard again, over his pants. Made a rule for himself: don’t think anymore about what Greg said. Think about what Greg did.</p><p class="p1">Shakily he lifted his hips and stripped down his trousers and pants, leaving his cock bobbing between his legs in the cool air of the flat. He got underneath his duvet again and closed his hand around himself. His eyes closed immediately. He hadn’t bothered with this in too long, having usually left it for the release of ordinary tension in cursory shower wanks.</p><p class="p1">Now, though. He trailed his fingertips over the skin of his cock, cataloguing its hardness, its shape. The tightness, already, of his bollocks, drawn up and desperate. He was thinking of the raggedness of Greg’s breathing in his ear, the knowledge that his being there had damaged Greg’s composure. The darkness of his eyes.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft made a loose circle with his fist and pulled it around his cock, teasing the foreskin and the tip. He was already wet. There was a hot little pulse of shame in that knowledge, and then the shame was metabolized as arousal. <em>You’re absurd, you’re pathetic, you want it so badly. He barely touched you and you’ve been hard ever since. You poor little naïve thing, you’ll have to be taught, you’ll have to be put in your place, he’ll have to teach you</em>—.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft wasn’t sure when he’d started mercilessly jerking his cock, his fist thumping against the heaviness of the duvet. He was making a mess. He was going to have to strip his bed, wash the sheets clean of his come, he was going to come in the bed, and later he could tell Greg, if he wanted, he could say, <em>you put your hands on me and I made myself come remembering it. </em></p><p class="p1">He was as hard as he’d ever been, he felt <em>desperate</em>, he felt unfamiliar to himself. He’d been kissed by the most handsome man he’d ever met, and christ he was hard, his balls full and heavy, he’d made himself feel his way, taken in his own hand, he was turning himself on, <em>god </em>you feel gorgeous, you’re so hard, you desperate boy, you—.</p><p class="p1">But that was it. It had been the word <em>boy. </em>Mycroft came convulsively, shooting out hot into his sheets and his hand, making a mess. When he finally calmed down, his heartbeat was throbbing in his temples. He was wrecked. He went tremblingly to the shower and didn’t get out for a long time.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">He spent the day in his office, working, and finally answered the text, which still read, "I can't stop smiling," with: "Neither can I, I'm afraid." His sleep that night was thin but not dreamless. In his dream he was held in some complicated, impossible splayed position, the work of dream logic, writhing and pale, and he was hard, and begging, and Greg was whispering, <em>good boy</em>.</p><p class="p1">Then, all of a sudden, he was breached by something thick—Greg’s cock, or fingers, or toy—and his face was hot with shame, he hadn’t <em>prepared</em>, he wasn’t clean—and then it hurt. It stretched him, it burned, it tore—he wasn’t ready. He didn’t know how. The pain was overwhelming. Greg was murmuring, <em>so good for me</em>, but it wasn’t good, and he hadn’t learned how.</p><p class="p1">He woke in the middle of the night ragingly hard and shaking. <em>It’s only a dream</em>, his father had used to say to him, late into his childhood, but by then Mycroft had started reading, and he knew that nothing ever is.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Playlist! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2su2fXpucL5isNb0X1CYSF?si=Y5H82Aq9TsGLoKGOIvC4Aw</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“The church and the college have a symbiotic relationship,” Greg said as he flicked the lights on. “So when their dilettantes need somewhere to practice…”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft walked down the central aisle, between the pews. Then he turned around to the back of the church to see the organ, old and gleaming. Comparing this one to the Trinity College organ he’d seen Greg play once was like a paring knife and a machete. “I still think it’s absurd that you have to practice here,” he said, “considering who you are.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed and started flicking switches, removing covers. “I think they’d have an easier time finding me an unclaimed clarinet. When I decided I want to take up practicing again, I basically tasked them with finding me a spare cathedral.”</p><p class="p1">“And this was the best they could do?”</p><p class="p1">“I like it. It seems like—people actually go to church here.”</p><p class="p1">“Harsh words from a non-Christian.”</p><p class="p1">“Real churchgoing is like seasoning for the organ, Mycroft. It can tell.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled at him, let it linger. This was allowed. “Is that so?”</p><p class="p1">Greg answered him by striking a rafter-shaking minor chord, a noise Mycroft could feel in his teeth. It felt like power, like <em>camp </em>power, like being gay in church, which is to say: like noise. He laughed, loudly, and couldn’t hear himself over the sound of the organ.</p><p class="p1">Greg finally let off and said, “Whoa. It’s a good old boy, isn’t it? In very good nick. Are you sure this is a turn-on for you?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed the little flare of nerves. “That’s not what I said,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“But you’re here,” Greg observed, cheeky.</p><p class="p1">“I’m a connoisseur of all keyboard instruments, as I told you.” Mycroft sniffed. “Perhaps you would have better luck in that department with a harpsichord.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed uproariously. He was standing on the platform next to the organ bench, facing away from the keyboards, looking at Mycroft. For a moment Mycroft thought he was going to say, <em>Come here</em>, and Mycroft was going to have to say, <em>I can’t, not here. </em>Instead Greg said, “Hush, you, I’m practicing.” He whirled and sat on the bench, his feet finding their places on the pedals. He rummaged in his bag for the sheet music, which was yellowed with age, from the curriculum library. With his back to Mycroft he said, “I don’t know how you’ll be able to do any reading with this racket, but we’ll see, I suppose,” and then he began.</p><p class="p1">But Mycroft didn’t try to read right away. He let himself roam the empty chapel, trailing his fingers over dusty hymnal racks and statues, and listening to Greg play. This was Liszt, good and bombastic. He let questions cycle through his mind without trying to answer them. These were the skills that live organ music could foster. The questions were: was this a date, and if so, by which dictionary? What would happen after organ practice, and would Mycroft ruin it by not being ready to have sex? Greg’s kiss in the car, upon picking him up, had been brief and casual, almost an afterthought. Did you have to state, in plain language, that something to be a date in order for it to be one?</p><p class="p1">Could Mycroft really kiss him, whenever he wanted? Could he interrupt Franz Liszt to such an end?</p><p class="p1">In the name of scholastic inquiry, he decided to find out. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he walked briskly back up the aisle to the organ and stood behind Greg, looking at the page of sheet music. Greg’s shoulders straightened ever so slightly, and for a moment his fingers fumbled on the keys. He stopped, went back a few bars, and tried again until he could play the passage smoothly. Then he let his hands fall into his lap and turned partway, craning his neck to look at Mycroft behind him. “Can I help you, Professor?”</p><p class="p1">“Only this,” Mycroft murmured, desperately aware that he was trying to be smooth, and he stooped, dipped his head, and kissed Greg, softly, only for a moment, but with purpose. He smelled of church and aftershave and sweat and moldy velvet, which is to say, he smelled like sin. His cheek was rough with stubble and his neck, when Mycroft touched it, was hot under his hand.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft straightened up, cleared his throat. He felt absurdly embarrassed.</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Greg said, “hello.”</p><p class="p1">“Posture, maestro,” Mycroft whispered, to hide his nerves, and fled the bench. He could still see that the back of Greg’s neck was flushed pink. Then he was glad he’d done it.</p><p class="p1">He retreated to the first row of pews and sat down with his copy of <em>The Invention of Jane Harrison</em> and his notebook. He bent his head over the work, but his heart was still thudding. He felt as accomplished, as proud of himself, as he ever had.</p><p class="p1">Eventually he became absorbed in his reading, not even noticing when the music stopped.He went to turn the page and Greg touched him on the shoulder, startling him. Greg was wearing his jacket already, his tote of sheet music in one hand, and his face was gentle. “You need a manhattan,” he informed Mycroft, smiling.</p><p class="p1">“For sitting through that?” Mycroft stood and stretched.</p><p class="p1">“No, just generally.”</p><p class="p1">“Why a manhattan?”</p><p class="p1">Greg smirked. “Would you rather something else? A cocktail, Mycroft. You deserve a cocktail. Because this is a date.”</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh</em>. Well this was clarifying data. “I tend to drink tequila on all my dates.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed out loud, and for the first time Mycroft felt sure that he was laughing with him, not at him. There was a feeling like freedom in knowing this, a looseness in his muscles. “Well, today you drink whiskey,” Greg said firmly, still smiling. Then there was another feeling, one had Mycroft felt before when Greg told him what to do. He flushed, his mouth dry.</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” he said, holding back the <em>sir</em>, and let Greg hold the door for him on the way out.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">The cocktail bar was low-lit and quiet on this Tuesday evening. Mycroft could feel Greg looking at him as he tipped his head back to sip from the dregs of his drink. It felt <em>strange</em>. To know that this man was interested, was curious about the way his throat worked. Nobody had ever coveted Mycroft’s details like that before. It was flattering and invasive, as if Mycroft was losing a privacy he hadn’t known he’d had.</p><p class="p1">“Tell me about this,” Greg said, dragging Mycroft’s book toward himself on the table. “<em>The Invention of Jane Harrison. </em>Hmm. Formidable lady.”</p><p class="p1">“The most. The two most well-known women classicists, author and subject. Harrison herself is often considered the first woman to be a professional academic. She taught here, for many decades. Helped to invent the modern field of classics.”</p><p class="p1">“At Corpus Christi?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled. “At Newnham, the women’s college. She was rumored to be the lover of modernist writer Hope Mirlees. Well. More than rumored.”</p><p class="p1">“I see.” Greg’s smile turned sly. “You come upon a fair number of more-than-rumors in your work, I imagine.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft huffed, blushing. “A fair number.”</p><p class="p1">“Did that ever—drive your research? Your field?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rubbed his hands over his face. Once again he was flattered by Greg’s interest and flustered by the intrusion. He had never learned to speak about himself. “I—sort of. Are you asking me if I’m—”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s face fell; his hands came up to profess innocence. “Labels aren’t important,” he said, but he looked chastened.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt distinctly ill. “I’ve always done better with the theory of things than the practice.”</p><p class="p1">“Is that where you’d like to stay?”</p><p class="p1">He couldn’t answer right away.“No,” he finally said, his voice dry. “But I can—hardly contemplate the idea of asking you to—start over again. To have some kind of pedagogical responsibility would hardly be conducive to us—.” He broke off, thoroughly discombobulated. “I don’t know.”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned, clearly unhappy. Mycroft’s heart sank. Greg said, “I wish you would tell me what you wanted. God, I’ve spent <em>weeks </em>wondering, months probably. Second-guessing all of it. Which is—” he laughed dryly, with no humor in it. “Not something I usually do. Usually I don’t struggle in this area at all. You have me questioning everything I say, every time I touch you I wonder if I’m making your skin crawl, if you just want me to leave you alone and stop harassing you… But then you look at me sometimes and I think that’s <em>not </em>true, that you do want—.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft, his face ablaze with humiliation, shook his head. He could hardly speak. “I hate—to think that I’ve had that sort of impact on you. I don’t think of myself as the sort of person who <em>could</em>. You’re just… Greg. Mag—magnificent.”</p><p class="p1">A look of genuine confusion came into Greg’s face. He puzzled over something for a very long time. “I didn’t know,” he said under his breath, and then shook his head, as if to disregard it. He looked up suddenly, into Mycroft’s eyes, and said, “Refusing to say what you really want is not selflessness.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed, closed his eyes. “I know,” he whispered. “Perhaps this is why you shouldn’t bother.”</p><p class="p1">“Perhaps this is why you should <em>say it</em>.” Greg’s jaw was set. He looked a little frightening. Mycroft loved him. Love filled his throat.</p><p class="p1">He swallowed, tried to steady himself. “I have never had a selfless motive, with regard to you. I have only wanted—quite selfishly—to be near you as much as possible. I have—I-I want there to be sex, as a part of that. I would like that very much.” He stared at the ice melting in his glass, feeling so flushed and embarrassed that he was dizzy.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft.” Greg’s voice was rough. He forced himself to look up. Greg’s face was impossibly earnest. “Is it so impossible to think that I could want the same things, with you?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft thought of his manifest lack of charms, his pale, unremarkable body, his shyness and inexperience. “Yes.”</p><p class="p1">Greg made a harsh little sound of dismissal in his throat. “That’s a very serious failure of imagination, I think.”</p><p class="p1">“I see.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think you do.”</p><p class="p1">“I would require—a great deal of patience, as I’ve said. More than I can ask you to supply.”</p><p class="p1">Greg got up suddenly, frightening Mycroft for a moment, but he went only to pay the tab. When he returned, he put on his jacket and slid his wallet into the pocket. “Patience is not a problem,” he said gently. “But I think there’s probably something else you need more.”</p><p class="p1"><em>A personality transplant</em>, Mycroft thought, longing for the solitude of his study and his books, far away from this conversation where he seemed to be making his beloved so angry. “What?”</p><p class="p1">Then Greg smiled. For the first time in long, torturous minutes. “A demonstration,” he said. “A series of small demonstrations. And that—I find myself thinking that I would enjoy that very much.”</p><p class="p1">This was how Mycroft came to be kissing Greg Lestrade in his small beat-up Saab on the street outside his flat. “We could go up,” Mycroft whispered, though the idea made him nervous.</p><p class="p1">Greg shook his head against Mycroft’s neck. “One thing at a time. This is a date. I’m a gentleman.”</p><p class="p1">“You are <em>not</em>,” Mycroft choked out, not sure whether he was joking or not, but Greg silenced him by gently nipping at his earlobe.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft submitted to this teasing for a long moment, and then with a burst of will he captured Greg’s face with two hands and snogged him deeply, pouring the passion and fear and devotion he felt into the kiss. It spun out for long moments, far more intense than he’d intended, and Greg made a small involuntary noise into the kiss, a cut-off moan. The sound drove arousal through Mycroft’s blood, sudden and fierce. But it made his chest hurt too. Something was there.</p><p class="p1">When the kiss broke, the noise of their breathing was overwhelming. Mycroft’s forehead was pressed hard into Greg’s cheekbone. Greg groped unseeing for his hand, his fingers scraping for a terrifying moment over Mycroft’s lap. When he found his hand, he brought it up to his own chest and covered his heart with it. Mycroft hardly had time to catalogue the warmth and softness of the fabric before he realized that Greg’s heart was pounding.</p><p class="p1">The knowledge broke something open inside him.</p><p class="p1">“Alright?” Greg whispered, hoarse and breathless.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft found Greg’s hand and pressed it to his own chest. “Alright?”</p><p class="p1">They pulled back from each other’s faces to regard each other. Greg’s hair was mussed from the work of Mycroft’s hands, silver-bright and chaotic in the streetlights, and his pupils were blown. He looked… turned on. Mycroft did not need a great deal of comparative data to know this. It was unbelievable, but he believed it.</p><p class="p1">“We’re a disaster,” Greg huffed.</p><p class="p1">“Kiss me, please,” Mycroft begged, and got his wish.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">When he had gone inside, hardly able to walk with arousal and exhilaration, he got a text alert from Greg. It said, “I know sometimes you like time to process things, on your own. I hope you’ll begin considering the chance that I fancy you very, very much.”</p><p class="p1">“We’ll consider it,” he imagined himself saying in the tones of a tenure review committee, crisp and disinterested, but really he was collapsing on the bed, clutching his phone, red-faced and delirious with joy.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">There were other dates, in the next few weeks; dates where Greg picked him up in his car and brought him home again. Mycroft did not offer to have him up, and Greg did not ask. But each goodnight kiss was more incendiary than the last, and less frightening. Then there were the moments in quiet bookstores or pub patios where Greg would slide his fingers over Mycroft’s wrist, or against the small of his back. These kinds of affection shocked Mycroft. They didn’t feel possessive, or constraining, as he’d feared they would. Instead, they seemed indulgent, like Greg couldn’t resist the pleasure that brushing his skin against Mycroft’s would bring him. Like every touch was a delicious little liberty. They were reassuring, too. When Mycroft was overwhelmed by Greg’s easy confidence, his skill with strangers, the incredible way he wore a button-up or a jacket, those touches reminded him: <em>consider the chance that I fancy you very very much. </em></p><p class="p1">Before long, he found himself hoping that Greg would touch him in public. It felt more manageable, more safe, than the looming possibility of doing more intimate things in private, things he wanted but did not know the rules of. In public, the stakes were low. He’d promised early on that he didn’t mind being out; he wasn’t an especially well-known person and everyone had assumed him gay for long enough. So Greg could take his liberties, putting his palm on Mycroft’s knee under a table or helping him on with his coat. If Mycroft was a little smug to be seen with him, so much the better.</p><p class="p1">They went to the symphony together and Mycroft watched Greg watch the conductor. Again he felt love swell in his throat; it hurt. They went to a posh Italian restaurant where Greg spilled tomatoes on his shirt during the first course and blushed spectacularly. They walked, complaining about Boris Johnson and undergraduates and tourists and flute soloists. One one quiet street at the edge of town, Mycroft crowded him up against a stone wall in the late April dusk and kissed him until it was indecent. When he stumbled away, putting space between their bodies, Greg could only sputter. There was a slight bulge in his trousers and Mycroft was glad, not intimidated.</p><p class="p1">“Christ,” Greg mumbled. “Don’t look so proud, you.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m a little proud,” Mycroft admitted.</p><p class="p1">“Oi!” Greg scolded. “Go stand over there and don’t look at me. I can’t take it.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft took his apparent tempting charms to the end of the block until Greg, flustered and smiling, joined him.</p><p class="p1">“What do you say we have dinner at mine tomorrow night?” Greg asked as they pushed through a kissing gate to the field beyond. He saw Mycroft’s face and added, “It doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t have any secret meaning.”</p><p class="p1">“I know,” Mycroft assured him, though the prospect was still nerve-wracking. “I think that sounds lovely.”</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">But the next day, a Monday, proved more challenging than Mycroft would have predicted. He received the news that a major grant application of his had been rejected. This put the fate of the research for his next monograph in major doubt; without the funding to travel and employ research assistants, it was unlikely he could proceed with the project at all. Less practically, the rejection shook him as these sorts of academic slights rarely did. He spent the day wondering whether his research topic seemed passé or out of touch, whether his days as a scholarly wunderkind had quite conclusively passed. He gave a tutorial with an indifferent student who ignored his advice, and he couldn’t make the printer work. By three o’clock he felt a migraine building behind his eyes, that telltale migraine smell emerging from nowhere. He felt fragile, like one stubbed toe or wrong word would make him collapse. He called an uber, too nervous about the aura to walk or drive, and retreated to his flat to lie in the dark.</p><p class="p1"><em>It doesn’t mean anything</em>, Greg had said when he invited Mycroft over, but he knew this was not true. He had meant that there were no hard expectations, that he would never pressure Mycroft into doing something he didn’t want to. But it did <em>mean something</em>. Everything did.</p><p class="p1">He thought, too, of Greg admitting, <em>every time I touch you I wonder if I’m making your skin crawl. </em>If he canceled tonight, if he didn’t proceed with the something, Greg would be incredibly hurt. A migraine was a PE class excuse, a ruse to get out of something onerous. He would think Mycroft was rejecting him, and Mycroft would not get another chance.</p><p class="p1">By six o’clock, the worst of the migraine had faded, leaving him headachey and drained but more or less alright. He showered, dressed, and shaved carefully, with shaky fingers. He had meant to buy a bottle of the wine on the short walk to Greg’s flat, but now adding that errand seemed insurmountable. By the time he’d arrived at his destination, he was sweaty and overstimulated. A distinctly unattractive and self-pitying part of him said, <em>Perhaps I should just get it over with. Do it tonight, push through, smile, and afterward I will be less afraid. </em>He was still castigating himself for this line of thought when Greg answered the door.</p><p class="p1">“Hi, everything’s <em>burning</em>,” Greg said brightly, and pulled him in for a kiss.</p><p class="p1">The smell of his cologne was sharper, fresher than usual. In other circumstances this clear preparation would have flattered Mycroft; as it was, the smell was too intense for him. Still, though, his touches—the softness of his mouth, his hand at Mycroft’s waist—were grounding. He followed Greg into the kitchen. “Can I help?”</p><p class="p1">“Can you turn back time?” Greg was stirring a congealed pot of something, amused with his own failure. Mycroft had never been more impressed by him.</p><p class="p1">“Let me see.” Mycroft took the wooden spoon from his hand and investigated. Greg slid a hand around his waist, nuzzled his face into Mycroft’s shoulder for a moment. It felt good, bad, too much. “It’s not burnt, just reduced down too much. A cup of water, perhaps?”</p><p class="p1">Greg fetched it, and together they saved the dinner. “How do you do it?” Greg said, grinning. It wasn’t clear whether his praise was genuine or ironic.</p><p class="p1">“A basic knowledge of culinary practices,” he said stiffly.</p><p class="p1">“You know everything.” He settled his hands at Mycroft’s hips, squaring them to face him. “Hi,” he said, his eyes grazing over Mycroft’s face and body. His scrutiny was fond, even hungry. When he scanned back up to Mycroft’s eyes, he said, “How are you?”</p><p class="p1"><em>Better now. </em>He mismanaged a smile. “I’m well. Happy—it’s good to see you.”</p><p class="p1">The smile that bloomed on Greg’s face was worth any headache. Telling Greg he was happy to see him was like putting a new-hatched bird in his hand, fragile and perfect. It made him glow. This knowledge burned in Mycroft’s chest. “How was your day?”</p><p class="p1">“Better now,” Greg said, laughing almost sheepishly. He stepped forward to kiss Mycroft, unhurried and exploratory. He tasted like the slice of cucumber he must have popped into his mouth while Mycroft was saving dinner. “Long rehearsal, longer faculty meeting. All the music I want is backordered. But now.”</p><p class="p1">“But now?” Mycroft murmured. He slid his hands over Greg’s back, feeling its strength and smoothness. Despite his fatigue, he felt something like peace unroll.</p><p class="p1">Greg murmured against his cheek. “Now it’s evening, and I’m going to open some wine, and you’re here, and I’m going to kiss you.”</p><p class="p1">Despite himself, Mycroft felt heat smolder inside him. “In what order?”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed a laugh, his breath warm on Mycroft’s skin. “What do you fancy?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft thought of his floundering professional career, scanning <em>Dear Professor Holmes, we regret to inform you</em>, thought of relaying this news to his editor at the university press, thought of the glittering aura that had already gone, for now. “Wine, please,” he said.</p><p class="p1">They drank while Greg finished the salad and told Mycroft a long story, charming because told by Greg, not because of its actual contents, about a rehearsal with his boy choir. There was a strange honor, Mycroft reflected, in being invited here on a Monday night. Greg was tired, it was clear, but he’d wanted Mycroft here on this ordinary evening to have dinner with him, no matter how early they had to wake up.</p><p class="p1">He was afraid of what this might mean, too, and he was weary, so he drained the wine more quickly than he usually would have. Greg did not seem to notice, and poured them both more. By the time he’d finished preparing dinner and left the main dish to simmer, Mycroft felt languid and pink-cheeked. He scraped his fingernails across Greg’s broad back, eliciting a shiver of pleasure. “Hello, you’ve been very patient,” Greg said, turning. His eyes were very dark. He smoothed his thumb over Mycroft’s wine-reddened lower lip.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s heart was beating too hard, in a way neither pleasurable nor not-pleasurable. “I like to watch you cook,” he said, because it was true.</p><p class="p1">Greg scoffed. “Then you have a taste for watching car crashes.” Delicately he fixed the corner of Mycroft’s shirt collar. “So. Would you be in the mood for some executive decisions? Or is that not the right tack?”</p><p class="p1">“Y-yes please.”</p><p class="p1">“Mm, good. I have two ideas, both of which you can leave or take as you please. First: I think everyone’s trousers should remain on tonight.”</p><p class="p1">Sheer relief, powerful as falling water, coursed through Mycroft in an instant.</p><p class="p1">Greg went on, more hesitantly. The desire in his voice made Mycroft’s teeth hurt. “The second idea is that… I think you should sit on my lap.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft mouth went dry, his face flushed. “I—” he began. “Yes.”</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled. “Still slow,” he promised.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft kissed him in answer, thinking furiously all the while. Thinking became more difficult when Greg led him over to the leather sofa, sat down, and tilted his head up to look at Mycroft. “Gorgeous,” he sighed.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft shook his head, unable to speak. He suddenly felt drunk.</p><p class="p1">“Come here,” Greg said, “it’s alright.” He sat up straighter so he could kiss Mycroft. His mouth was warm and soft, his tongue working against Mycroft’s, his hands gentle. Gradually he leaned back and Mycroft followed him, first putting a knee between his legs, then straddling his lap. Greg suppressed a groan as he ran his hands over Mycroft’s body. “Wow,” he whispered.</p><p class="p1">“I’m not—” Mycroft mumbled, trying to profess his imperfection and his exhaustion at once.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft,” Greg breathed, holding his face still with two hands. “Hush.” Then he wrapped his arms around Mycroft’s neck, crushing them together, and kissed him with all his might.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft soon adjusted to the strange sensation of being astride this man’s lap, distributing his weight, feeling the strength and tension in Greg’s thighs beneath him. Through Greg’s thin T-shirt he could feel the firm spread of his chest, the slim downward slide of his ribs. Every breath he took and small sound he made was intoxicating. </p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands were firm, almost rough, around his hips, just above his arse. This was the best sensation of them all, grounding and certain. Mycroft leaned into it. Greg’s mouth trailed down to suck a kiss into the hollow of Mycroft’s jaw, wet and hot. Without his permission, Mycroft’s hips jerked forward, his hands tightened in Greg’s shirt. He made an embarrassing mewling sound. He <em>wanted. </em>For a moment he contemplated whispering, “Can we revisit the trousers-on rule?” It was too easy to imagine Greg’s hands, tanned and broad, against his bare skin, leaving pink marks from the strength of his grip.</p><p class="p1">But as the kiss went on, as they both grew bolder and sloppier, teeth clinking and fingers digging into flesh, he faltered. He felt overheated and unsteady the way you do when you stand up at a party and realize you’re drunk. He could still feel the pressure and throb of the headache behind his eyes. He began to feel that there was a next step required in the encounter, a gesture or compliment or trick that he did not know. He felt, for an ugly self-pitying moment, very alone. Nobody’s desires had ever been so irreconcilable as his. He had been given everything he’d wanted and would now ruin it, as he could have predicted.</p><p class="p1">His kissing stuttered to a stop. For a moment he merely rested his forehead against Greg’s, trying to gather himself. He felt traitorous pricks of heat start behind his eyes. He knew, somewhere deep in the middle of him, that everything would be alright, that he was being silly, but the headache and wine and lack of food were conspiring to send him far away from the alright place. He took a breath, and to his shame, it shook badly.</p><p class="p1">Greg pulled back at once, his fingers rising to cup Mycroft’s chin. “Love?” He asked, which had the immediate and unfortunate effect of filling Mycroft’s eyes with tears. The knowledge that he was mucking this up beyond belief, crying during an objectively perfect makeout, only made it worse. “Oh,” said Greg gently, tilting his head. “What’s this?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft took a deep breath. “You’re perfect, please don’t think—you haven’t done anything I didn’t want—I promise.”</p><p class="p1">“Darling.” He scraped one hand up and down Mycroft’s back. “I know. What is it?”</p><p class="p1">“Just—I’m so sorry—it’s nothing.” He buried his face in Greg’s shoulder.</p><p class="p1">“We don’t have to do anything, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s not—that. I just—m-migraine, too much wine, it all just became—I’m sorry, Gregory, truly I am.”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned, his spine straightening. “You’ve had a migraine—today? Jesus, Mycroft, why didn’t you say?”</p><p class="p1">The tears surged again, and he spent a moment beating them back. “I <em>want </em>you,” he said finally, hearing the childishness in his voice. He sounded like a stranger. <em>I’ve lectured at the Sorbonne</em>, he thought, finding the strength to be pompous even as he floundered, <em>And the Sorbonne was less paralyzing, less important than this. </em></p><p class="p1">Suddenly Greg leant forward and wrapped his arms around Mycroft, pulled his down against his chest and held him. It was terrifying to be held down. He wanted to bolt; he wanted to beg for more. “Not tonight,” Greg murmured. “Executive decision.”</p><p class="p1">He made Mycroft sit on the couch while he brought him a glass of water and watched him drink it. Then the dal he’d made, dolloped with yogurt. He watched Mycroft’s face carefully as he ate, as if he might keel over at any moment. “I’m not going to collapse,” Mycroft protested. The shame was hot and heavy like a blanket.</p><p class="p1">Greg was sitting on the floor at his feet, resting against the sofa. He leant his head against Mycroft’s knee for a moment. “You’ve never had any luck getting me not to worry about you before,” he said softly. “Must mean I fancy you.”</p><p class="p1">It had not occurred to Mycroft that he would want to. “I don’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">Greg twisted so that he could prop his chin up on Mycroft’s thigh. He looked so beautiful in the lamplight of the room, the shadows catching on his eyelashes and cheekbones. “Mycroft,” he said. “You know I would want to see you even if we only went to the Seven Swans and talked about nicotine gum and <em>Roman Britain Today</em>?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft closed his eyes. He could cry again. “I <em>want </em>to have sex.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed. “We will. Not tonight.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft put his bowl to the side and slid down onto the floor next to Greg, their legs stretched out alongside each other. He pressed his mouth into the side of Greg’s shoulder, muscle and bone and fat and warmth. Greg was sitting still, just breathing. This moment, this feeling, was like holding a snowflake on the tip of your finger. Mycroft said into the waffle-knit fabric of Greg’s shirt, so muffled it was almost inaudible, “I care for you more than I can say.”</p><p class="p1">Greg turned his chin and kissed the top of Mycroft’s head. It was acknowledgement, return, and benediction. They sat there for a long moment, exhausted. Finally Greg said, “Would you lay down with me?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Playlist, now with partita! Some of my favorite Bach. </p><p>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2su2fXpucL5isNb0X1CYSF?si=_RCkHu74RJ6eujdccJqlgA</p><p>Thank you so much for your comments and kudos. I appreciate you!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">He was still thinking about how it had felt five days later, standing on the stage of the McCrum Lecture Theater. He was standing behind the lectern, arranging his notes, minutely adjusting his bottle of water, but in his mind he was in Greg Lestrade’s bed, Greg Lestrade’s arm slung over his waist. The throb of his headache against Greg’s pillows, the familiar detergent scent amplified here. Tension sluicing out of his body. “Just like this,” Greg saying, his chest slotting against Mycroft’s back. He’d carefully kept his hips back from Mycroft’s arse, but Mycroft hadn’t known if this meant something. Had he been hard? Mycroft hadn’t been; he’d felt exhausted and more migrainey than he’d realized, now that he allowed himself to acknowledge it. The press of Greg’s chest, the weight of his arm, was so pleasurable that Mycroft thought he might dissolve. Greg hadn’t said anything, though Mycroft could have sworn he could feel him holding his words back, trying to let a soothing quiet settle, like he’d known that this what was Mycroft would need even though it wasn’t his natural inclination, and that knowledge was like another weight, warm heavy weight over the crown of his aching head. His eyes had started burning again, because Greg was here, here and not saying anything.</p><p class="p1">He was still thinking about that moment when the chair of classics began reading his introduction. The hall was fairly full; Mycroft felt gratified. He was not nervous. He had been doing this since he was twenty-four.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft Holmes holds the Warren Thompson Endowed Chair of Classics at Corpus Christi College,” the chair read. “His monographs include <em>The Poetry of Horace</em>, <em>Roman Britain Today</em>, and <em>The Master’s Sandal: Class and Enslavement in the Age of Augustus. </em>He is frequently in demand as a keynote speaker and recently traveled to Istanbul on a research fellowship from the Humanities Fund. He is currently at work on a monograph on the religious practices of Roman communities along the Euphrates. Please join me in welcoming Professor Mycroft Holmes.”</p><p class="p1">The applause was polite. Mycroft adjusted his suit jacket and took his place behind the podium. He fingered the PowerPoint clicker in his pocket. “Thank you very much, Nancy, for that generous introduction. And thank you to the college for hosting my talk today. I would like to share with you a portion of the introduction to my forthcoming book.” The book which had now been irreparably stalled by the rejection of his grant application, but they didn’t need to know that.</p><p class="p1">He scanned the audience in a perfunctory way as he began to talk, seeing colleagues, a few graduate students, faculty from other colleges, even a scholar-friend of his from Oxford, which was very kind. He brightened his gaze a bit to make eye contact with him, thinking of Greg’s performance facial expressions, how he could so easily express pride and humility and pleasure and demurral with the different shades of his smile. Then, as he was thinking about this skill, trying to convey it to his friend from Oxford, he saw Greg himself. He was sitting in the far back of the auditorium, nearly invisible, but Mycroft could see the collar of his dark grey suit jacket and white shirt. A thrill of nerves and outrage surged through him, but then he blinked and the PowerPoint clicker was still in his hand. He knew every slide by heart. When Greg saw him looking, he gave Mycroft a brilliant smile.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled back. He clicked to the first slide. He began to speak.</p><p class="p1">There was a kinetic energy to giving a talk like this; his eyes moving from page to slide to audience, flicking each page over when he reached the end. He landed each semi-scripted joke, eliciting interested chuckles, and he came to a gentle pause at the end of each major point. There is a moment in every public speech when you feel definitively whether the audience is with you, on your side, or whether they aren’t. Mycroft had been giving these sort of talks since graduate school, and had long since conquered his shyness in this particular arena. As he came to the end of the speech, he knew for certain that his audience was on his side—as much as ever is possible in a talk on the historiography of classical religion. He finished the paper, looked up, and saw Greg beaming at him across the sea of audience members, beaming as if he’d done something amazing. Mycroft promptly flushed to his hair, hyper-conscious of it because of the crowd’s attention, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care.</p><p class="p1">Greg disappeared after the Q&amp;A, when everyone filed out to the reception, which left Mycroft to focus without distraction on conversation with colleagues and students. He found a glass of wine, demurred a plate of biscuits and cheese, and for the next forty minutes, gave himself over entirely to chitchat. This did not come naturally to him, but he could do it, especially when the work was his own. He could tell anecdotes related to the historical story he’d told; he could flatter his colleague down the street whose work was similar; he could inquire after the coursework of graduate students who skulked at the edge of his previous conversation, hoping for a moment of face time.</p><p class="p1">When the reception petered out, Mycroft said his thanks to the organizers and went to the bathroom before going home. When he opened the door to the bathroom, he found Greg standing by the sink. He was wearing his dark grey suit, one Mycroft had seen before, and scrolling aimlessly through something on his phone. He had silver stubble growing in across his jaw and the last time Mycroft had seen him had been in bed. “Oh, hi,” he said, putting his phone away. “Is the reception done?”</p><p class="p1">“I—yes—Greg?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“What are you doing here? In the bathroom?”</p><p class="p1">“I thought perhaps it might make you nervous if I was underfoot during the mingling,” he explained, already smiling a little at himself. “And I didn’t want you to be nervous, but I did want to see you. So I just hid in here.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. He made an inelegant movement, from childhood, of ducking his head to see if any feet were visible under the cubicle walls. They were alone.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry, was that not—” Greg started, and Mycroft interrupted him with a kiss. He cupped Greg’s prickly cheeks in both hands and kissed him as thoroughly as he could, and when he got lost in the mechanics he fell back on sucking Greg’s lower lip, which produced a reaction of which he approved.</p><p class="p1">When he pulled back, he was flustered and embarrassed that he’d done it, and embarrassed than he’d done it here, and he hid his face by breathing into Greg’s jacket for a moment. Then he heard Greg take a shuddery breath and realized that he was flustered too. He put his hands on Mycroft’s shoulders, massaging vaguely with his thumbs. “I should have asked,” Greg said quietly.</p><p class="p1">“No,” Mycroft said.</p><p class="p1">“Well, then. Maybe I’ll push my luck.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked up. “I wouldn’t advise against it.”</p><p class="p1">“In that case. I wonder if the Warren Thompson Endowed Chair of Classics would have dinner with me.”</p><p class="p1">He was so absurdly handsome, across-the-room handsome, the very idea of handsomeness, the sort of person Mycroft had never even thought to daydream about getting to touch. Until he had. Close up like this, Greg’s eyes were large and dark and complicated. His lips were pink from being kissed. Even his nose was perfect. His hair was grey and distinguished and Mycroft knew from personal experience that he had batons in the drawer of his nightstand. Mycroft closed his eyes. “Please,” he said.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">“Am I still taking you to dinner if you’re showing me this place? And how did you find it, anyway? I’ve never seen it before.” Greg sat down and picked up the menu at the tiny Italian restaurant Mycroft had been visiting since he’d first moved to Cambridge.</p><p class="p1">“You haven’t lived in Cambridge as long as I have. You can take me to dinner in Vienna.” Mycroft blushed hard when he’d realized what he’d said, but he didn’t take it back.</p><p class="p1">Greg’s eyebrows went up, and then he closed his eyes and smiled. “There’s this place, a few blocks from the river, mosaics on the walls, house wine that flows like water… It’s a dangerous place. I’d love to see you there.”</p><p class="p1">“Mm,” Mycroft said, but he was smiling too.</p><p class="p1">“Do you speak German?”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t be absurd,” Mycroft deadpanned, and Greg laughed longer than he thought the joke warranted.</p><p class="p1">“Is that a yes?” He asked finally.</p><p class="p1">“When I run into you in Vienna, I suppose you’ll find out.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s face looked like he was trying to stop smiling and failing. “There are more direct routes to that scenario than ‘running into you,’ but that’s for another time.” He was about to say something else, but they were interrupted by the waiter. Mycroft ordered a bottle of white and an antipasti plate.</p><p class="p1">It turned out that every moment of fear or self-loathing Mycroft had had in the last several months was worth it to see Greg Lestrade, stubbly and wrinkled from a long workday, pouring himself a glass of wine while a flickering taper candle obscured his chin. “It’s good,” Greg reported.</p><p class="p1">“Yes.” It amused Mycroft to think that his taste in wine had been in doubt. “May I ask you an impertinent question?”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed. “Gods, I hope you will.”</p><p class="p1">“You came to my lecture on religious practices in ancient Rome. In Corpus Christi.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was still grinning, his most impertinent version. “I’m not hearing a question, Dr. Holmes,” he said, sending a flare of heat through Mycroft.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know if you noticed this today, but most academic questions tend to take the form of statements.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed again.</p><p class="p1">“What inspired the visit? There’s the question.”</p><p class="p1">“Let me answer a question with a question. Are you angry about it?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft stared at him. “No.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, then. I saw a flyer for it, and I thought I would—um—enjoy learning more about your work.”</p><p class="p1">“Did you?”</p><p class="p1">To Mycroft’s complete astonishment, Greg looked the slightest bit sheepish. “Very much,” he said. “You were—it was really nice to see you in your element. I liked hearing your writing. It’s even more elegant than I thought.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft did not know what to say about this, so he said nothing.</p><p class="p1">“Everyone hung on your every word, you know. You should have seen how they all looked at you. The students, especially, but everybody really. I hope it was okay—I tried to stay out of sight, I didn’t want to interrupt your work, but I know you saw me.”</p><p class="p1">“I didn’t mind.”</p><p class="p1">“You looked—”</p><p class="p1">“What?” Mycroft asked, stomach lurching.</p><p class="p1">“You looked completely in control. Completely at ease.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s a bit generous. But yes, I suppose I—. I have spent my life building accomplishment in that sphere. It is the one in which I feel most at home.”</p><p class="p1">“But other spheres?” Greg was eating all the peperoncinis from the antipasti plate with a kind of greedy rush. This display of mild bad manners made Mycroft’s chest hurt with love.</p><p class="p1">“You know very well my lack of prowess in other spheres,” he mumbled, eyes on the tablecloth.</p><p class="p1">Greg made a harsh scoffing sound, slightly too loud in the tiny restaurant. “I forgot you can’t play the pipe organ. Shameful.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled. “I can, actually. Well, no. I can play the piano. I can’t imagine how you manage all those pedals.”</p><p class="p1">“You can play—Mycroft!”</p><p class="p1">“Mm.”</p><p class="p1">“I can’t believe you.”</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t ask.” Possibly this was too rude, but Greg only smiled.</p><p class="p1">“I’ve been asking all the wrong questions. I—piano?”</p><p class="p1">“Nannerl,” Mycroft said, and sipped his wine.</p><p class="p1">“You mean that Sherlock learned the violin, and you learned the piano.”</p><p class="p1">“To begin with, yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft,” Greg said, which probably meant, <em>go on. </em></p><p class="p1">“My piano practice became less—urgent—once it became clear that Sherlock had prodigy talent. And once he began composing.”</p><p class="p1">Greg regarded him as he chewed a marinated mushroom. “You were good,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“I was not a prodigy.”</p><p class="p1">“Did they make you stop?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft did not want to talk about his parents. “No.” Then, “there are many ways to discourage something without saying so in so many words.”</p><p class="p1">They looked at each other over a plate of fragrant vinegary foods, not romantic foods, Mycroft had realized too late. He felt held, pinned, by Greg’s gaze. He never wanted it to end. “Nannerl,” Greg said, and there were great stores of compassion in his voice.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft nodded. “Music was Sherlock’s sphere; it always has been. He was born to do it. And I discovered at an early age that scholarship was mine. I was top of my class at my comprehensive, and got a very good scholarship to Pembroke College, a few blocks from where we’re sitting now. And then there was Princeton, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford. Then this. This was what came naturally to me. I have done well.”</p><p class="p1">There was something like heartbreak in Greg’s face, something swimming with emotion. All he said was, “I could see that. I don’t doubt it.”</p><p class="p1">“The book is stalled. I didn’t mention that today, but the research is stalled. I’m uncertain as to what can be done. I—had a major grant rejected. The future of the project is unclear.” Mycroft had not told anyone this yet. His fingertips felt hot.</p><p class="p1">Greg was still looking at him. Then he said, “I think this <em>sphere </em>talk is highly—misleading.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blinked.</p><p class="p1">Greg rubbed his hand over his mouth. He seemed vexed. “I wish. I wish you didn’t have the idea that you are good with books and not good at anything else. I just feel like you’ve closed yourself off from trying things, and from letting yourself have confidence that is totally deserved, and I am way out of line here, but I wish you knew—.” He broke off, bit his lip. “I wish I’d known that you play the piano.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had the unpleasant teenaged sensation of feeling attacked. He was forty-two, so he waited for it to pass. “If it means that much to you, I will play it for you. I’m severely out of practice. But I—know some Bach. I used to know all the Partitas.”</p><p class="p1">A little flame of pain flickered over Greg’s face, a light Mycroft didn’t understand. “I’d like that,” he said hoarsely. “I—Mycroft—please say no, if you don’t want this, but I’d. I’d really like to take you home tonight.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft said that he thought he’d like that very much.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">When they had walked to Mycroft’s building, he said, “I don’t have a piano upstairs but I do have a very nice brandy,” and his voice shook a little but not too badly.</p><p class="p1">For the first time in a month, Greg said yes.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft wasn’t sure how far to go with the brandy ruse. Were you supposed to actually pour and drink it? Was it merely a rhetorical advice? Perhaps he could have offered something he didn’t even have. Despite Greg’s protests, he still felt strongly that he was outside his sphere. He poured the brandy.</p><p class="p1">“It’s excellent,” Greg said, rubbing at the side of his neck. Mycroft realized that he hadn’t asked him a thing about his day.</p><p class="p1">“You’re tired.”</p><p class="p1">“Mm. Just good tired. Long day of choosing repertoire. Bent my brain all out of shape trying to understand a posh toff’s speech about Ancient Rome.” He sank gratefully into Mycroft’s sofa, taking off his tie. The sight sent unbidden arousal racing through Mycroft.</p><p class="p1">“My brother regularly reminds me that it is indeed very taxing to listen to me speak.”</p><p class="p1">Greg scoffed. “As somebody who has been forced into an hour-long argument about the evils of six-eight time, let me assure you that he does not have the authority to say so.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft huffed a laugh.</p><p class="p1">“Probably this should go without saying, but I don’t find it taxing to listen to you speak. I find it—extremely nice.”</p><p class="p1">The brandy felt hot and sweet going down. Mycroft did not say the first thing that came to his mind, which was: <em>your voice is my favorite sound I’ve ever heard. </em>He said only, “You’re very kind.”</p><p class="p1">“Not particularly,” Greg said, shifting on the sofa. “Come here, please.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft obliged, feeling brandy and the successes of the day keeping nerves at bay. He put his snifter on the coffee table and sat sideways on the sofa, facing Greg. It seemed possible that he might indeed have been drunk, because he said, “You look so good right now.”</p><p class="p1">Greg reared back, surprised, with a big spreading smile. “I have pit stains and my trousers don’t fit right.”</p><p class="p1">“You always look so good to me,” Mycroft said, and kissed him. His mouth was spiced with brandy and the last hint of tomato sauce; his stubble was rough and Mycroft shivered when he thought about how it was scraping his skin, how he could see where Greg’s beard had been in the mirror. Greg’s hand came to rest on Mycroft’s lower thigh. His tongue was working, without subtlety, into Mycroft’s mouth, and Mycroft moaned into the kiss. He couldn’t help it. <em>Take me to Vienna</em>, he wanted to say, because they were the dirtiest words he could think of. He didn’t know any dirty words. “<em>Please</em>,” he said against Greg’s neck.</p><p class="p1">Greg’s voice was low and breathy. “Please what, Dr. Holmes?”</p><p class="p1">He had been unsuccessful in hiding how much he liked that. “Please—put your hands on me.”</p><p class="p1">There was a tiny little gasp from Greg that Mycroft did not miss. The air between them felt humid, charged with energy. “Come here,” Greg said. He gestured to show that he wanted Mycroft in his lap.</p><p class="p1">This time, with no migraine or fresh rejection storming his system, Mycroft was intensely aware of the eroticism of the posture, how his legs were spread over Greg’s lap, his arms resting on Greg’s shoulders. He felt splayed out and vulnerable, something to be touched. He looked at Greg’s face and knew that Greg wanted to touch him.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft dipped his head to kiss him, a wet, urgent, sucking thing, like he was trying to elicit something personal and private from Greg. He could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his veins. Greg’s hands were clutching at the small of his back, blunt fingertips rubbing patterns across his shirt. “Untuck it,” Mycroft whispered, and Greg, with virginal hesitation, did. Then he dipped his hands underneath.</p><p class="p1">The heat and pressure of Greg’s hands on Mycroft’s bare back made him cry out. His hips canted forward. His nose brushed Greg’s; he was too overcome to kiss. Greg’s fingers were scraping back and forth against his skin, until he could almost feel the nails. Suddenly Mycroft felt an urgency of arousal that he associated with being about to come, with his cock hardening further in his own hand, even though his cock had not been touched and he was only mostly hard. It was just that Greg’s hands were under his shirt and his muscular chest was very close and his breath was ragged in Mycroft’s ear.</p><p class="p1">A wild, nihilistic part of Mycroft instructed him: <em>you can probably have whatever you want, this could be the time to find out</em>. He began to unbutton Greg’s shirt. Every button revealed more of his chest, which was tan and muscled under a layer of winter fat and covered with wiry dark hair. Mycroft’s mouth was watering. He was in a man’s arms; he was allowed to see his chest, he was allowed to. touch—. He traced his fingers over Greg’s pecs down to his nipples, and listened to Greg’s breath hitch. He could feel Greg’s burgeoning erection fighting against his suit trousers under Mycroft’s left thigh and buttock. It felt incredible. He pushed Greg’s shirt back over his shoulders, until Greg pitched in and took it off. “Is this okay?” Greg asked, rather foolishly, since Mycroft had initiated it.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft said, “More.”</p><p class="p1">“We can stop whenever you want,” Greg was saying, but his hands were possessive, greedy.</p><p class="p1">“I’m <em>telling you yes</em>, it’s alright, here—” Mycroft plucked at his shirt, gesturing for Greg to unbutton it. Greg did, with confused fingers.</p><p class="p1">When he’d stripped it off, he ran his hands over Mycroft’s shoulders, his thin, sparsely haired chest and soft waist. Mycroft wanted to squirm under the scrutiny, but Greg’s touch felt so wonderful, felt like worship. “Christ,” Greg muttered, “Gorgeous. I’ve thought about this—you make me crazy.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft wanted to deny this statement, wanted to insist that it couldn’t possibly be true. But he was a scholar trained to draw conclusions based on evidence. Greg’s eyes were incendiary; he looked like he wanted to <em>consume </em>Mycroft. His hands, broad and hot, were brushing across Mycroft’s neck on one side and his hip on the other, and then one came down to pinch his exposed nipple. Mycroft bucked and whined. He felt, for the first time in his life, gorgeous.</p><p class="p1">He realized belatedly that he was digging his fingers into Greg’s shoulder blades, holding on for dear life. He was so hard that his trousers were becoming distinctly uncomfortable. “Please,” he said, “Kiss me.”</p><p class="p1">Greg immediately obliged him, and he put his hand roughly on the back of Mycroft’s neck to do it, drawing him down to meet his mouth. It was this gesture, more than the kiss itself, that sent Mycroft’s arousal through the roof. His initial request had been <em>put your hands on me</em>, and it had been accurate, he realized. This was what he wanted most of all.</p><p class="p1">The kiss, though, was on its own merits overwhelming. They had long since given up the pretense of polite, investigative kissing. Mycroft opened his mouth and let Greg penetrate it with his tongue, let himself be held against Greg’s face. After a few moments Greg moved down, kissing his jaw and neck, then sucking a painful mark into his collarbone. Mycroft’s hips were now bucking rhythmically. He thought with a new clarity: <em>if he doesn’t touch me, I’ll die. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg’s movements slowed, and he laid his face into the curve of Mycroft’s neck, breathing hotly into his humid, kiss-slicked skin. “We can stop,” Greg said. His chest was heaving.</p><p class="p1">Two things were equally evident to Mycroft: first, that Greg would stop immediately, and without resentment, if he asked. Second, that Greg did not want to stop. It was the combination of these two truths that emboldened him. That, and the desperate rising sense that he would come whether Greg unfastened his trousers or not. “Please,” he whispered, his fingers scraping at the sweaty short hairs at the nape of Greg’s neck. “I need you to—I want you to touch me. Make me—.”</p><p class="p1">Greg straightened up at once. “Are you sure?”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Greg</em>,” Mycroft moaned, more than a little exasperated.</p><p class="p1">A smile that could have lit the entire flat spread across Greg’s face. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I want to make you feel so good. Safe and good and adored.”</p><p class="p1">“You do, I promise, it’s fi—ine.” Mycroft’s voice hitched as he felt Greg’s fingers at the button of his trousers. He prepared himself to be embarrassed at how hard he was, but it didn’t come.</p><p class="p1">“Hips up,” Greg whispered, and the command withdrew all intelligent thought from Mycroft’s brain. He hitched his hips up. Greg tugged his trousers down. There was something about being undressed—and in this man’s lap—that felt <em>wrong</em>, wrong in a way that made Mycroft’s heart beat fast and mouth dry out. Christ, this was not going to take long.</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands were gentle—far too gentle—as they rubbed over Mycroft’s hips and then inward, over his cock through his pants. Still his touch felt incredible. Mycroft no longer had any control over the noises he was making.</p><p class="p1">“I’m going to make you feel so good, gorgeous, let me see, just let me take care of it, I’ll show you—” Greg was whispering.</p><p class="p1">“Please, please, I need—”</p><p class="p1">“I’m just going to pull these down, darling, show me your—.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had long lost his ability to be self conscious. He was red-faced and huffing and squirming in Greg’s lap, and aware of none of these things, thinking only of Greg’s hands on his cock, how good it would feel to come. He whimpered as Greg drew down his boxer briefs. He had never been hard like this in another person’s presence before.</p><p class="p1">When he looked up, Greg was licking his own hand. The sight made the actual implementation of that hand almost unnecessary. But Greg looked about as desperate to touch him as he was to be touched. His hand, slick now, closed around Mycroft’s cock. Mycroft clamped his mouth shut around a moan, unconvincingly. The pressure of it—the knowledge that it was <em>Greg</em>—made it unbearable.</p><p class="p1">“Let me hear you,” Greg said, and then his hand began to move.</p><p class="p1">“Fff<em>uck</em>,” Mycroft slurred, his hips bucking under Greg’s hand.</p><p class="p1">He was leaking, and Greg’s thumb flicked up to smear his wetness from the slit, eliciting such a painful little surge of arousal that Mycroft flinched. Greg was using his precome to jack his cock, filthy and slow and careful. He was taking care of him. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he was chanting as he pumped up and down. “You’re doing so well for me, you’re perfect.”</p><p class="p1">“Greg—” Mycroft could feel his bollocks drawing up tighter, every sinew in him taut and burning with pleasure. Every time Greg brought his hand up to swirl over the head of his cock, his need ratcheted up higher. When Mycroft’s cries grew higher pitched and closer together, Greg slowed his rhythm, teasing the frenulum and the underside, trying without much success to touch his balls through the constrictive fabric of his pants. But Mycroft had waited long enough. He was keening up far enough to nudge the tip of his cock against Greg’s exposed stomach. That sight alone was nearly enough to send him over the edge. “Please, please, I need to come,” he begged.</p><p class="p1">Greg took pity on him. “I want to see it.” His hair and eyes were wild. “Come for me.” He stroked Mycroft furiously, making an obscene, glorious noise, and the heat in Mycroft’s core grew and grew, with a blaze of intensity, and it overcame him. He was coming, in hot, filthy pulses, jerking helplessly in Greg’s hand, moaning. His come streaked across Greg’s hand and stomach and chest. He’d made a mess.</p><p class="p1">Greg stroked him through the last of it and then let him go. Kissed his lips, held onto the back of his neck. “Beautiful,” he promised. “Beautiful for me.”</p><p class="p1">Even in his post-orgasm haze, Mycroft became anxiously fixated on reciprocation, on proving his unselfishness. “Let me,” he began, groping for Greg’s cock, now mouthwateringly obvious through his trousers.</p><p class="p1">Greg brushed a disorganized kiss across his cheekbone. “It’s alright, it’s alright.”</p><p class="p1">“No it’s not.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m fine, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“<em>I’m </em>not, I want to see you.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, either amused or annoyed or aroused. He helped slide Mycroft off his waist, limp and wrung out on the sofa. Then he unfastened his own trousers and tugged them down. He wore expensive-looking black boxers, the loose fabric tented by his cock. “You’ve done so well,” he was saying. “You’ve given me so much. You don’t have to—I just want to show you. Show you how you make me feel.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was going to touch himself, Mycroft realized. He felt simultaneous waves of excitement, relief, and disappointment. “Show me.”</p><p class="p1">Greg pulled his cock out of his pants—it was long, curved, and ragingly hard. Mycroft’s mouth dropped open. <em>You’re beautiful</em>, he wanted to say, but he’d lost his capacity for speech. Greg’s hand was already moving on his cock. He was—he was using Mycroft’s come to stroke himself. Christ. “This isn’t going to take very long,” he said, his voice thready and low. “Watching you like that—I can’t believe—you have no idea what you do to me, Mycroft. I’m going to show you, I’m going to—<em>oh.</em>”</p><p class="p1">Belatedly Mycroft realized he could help. He raised up on his knees and tugged Greg’s earlobe between his teeth, flicking his tongue over its edge.</p><p class="p1">“Oh <em>fuck</em>,” Greg said, and came. The sight of him, eyes clamped shut, hand working furiously over his spurting cock, was the most incredible thing Mycroft had ever seen.</p><p class="p1">As soon as he was reasonably cleaned up, Mycroft was halfway back in his lap, kissing him languorously. “Thank you,” he whispered against Greg’s skin.</p><p class="p1">“Shush.” Greg’s hands were soft on his shoulders, his back, his cheeks. “You make me so happy.”</p><p class="p1">Every one of Mycroft’s neurons was firing. He was too overwhelmed to say, <em>You have given me more than I thought anyone ever would. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg huffed. “We didn’t make it to the bed.” Then his eyes flew open. “It was perfect,” he promised. “Better than I could have—yeah.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft nodded. He felt small and fragile and warm. He could not ask to be held, not now. He’d already taken so much. He tried to communicate his gratitude by nuzzling his face into Greg’s neck.</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, scratching gently at Mycroft’s scalp. “Christ, the way you make me feel. You’re just—ugh. <em>Mycroft.</em>”</p><p class="p1">“Greg.” He kissed the corner of his mouth.</p><p class="p1">They sat there, entangled, for a long time. Mycroft’s mind was pleasantly empty.</p><p class="p1">Finally Greg straightened up, rolling his shoulders. “God, I don’t want to go. I’d like to stay—but I should give you space, and I’ve got this really early meeting.”</p><p class="p1">“I understand,” Mycroft said.</p><p class="p1">“<em>Please </em>believe me when I say this was perfect—that I want to stay. I just know if I lay down, even for a minute, I won’t wake up till eight in the morning. I—ha, I’m going to sleep really hard after this.”</p><p class="p1">“I believe you,” Mycroft said, and miraculously he did. He was happy, and also suddenly desperate to be alone.</p><p class="p1">“You’re alright?”</p><p class="p1">“Better than,” Mycroft promised, and kissed him. “You walked here; finish your brandy.” He occupied himself with practicalities so he would not say, <em>I have loved you since I’ve known you, </em>or <em>I would never have lost my virginity to anyone else </em>or <em>everything good is because of you</em>. He could not say these things; he would scare him away. So he found Greg’s tie and his keys and said, “Thank you. For coming to my lecture. For—for everything.”</p><p class="p1">Greg grinned broadly, and then he put his thumb on Mycroft’s chin and kissed him. It was a proprietary kiss, full of ownership. Mycroft’s spine was full of light. Against his jaw, Greg said, “Thank <em>you</em>, believe me—I’ll see you soon, okay? Really soon.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">When Greg had gone, Mycroft allowed himself a final, shameful indulgence. He went to the window overlooking the street, just in time to see the Director of Music, in crumpled suit jacket, singing on his way home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Turns out everyone is gay fragile!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: brief mentions of past homophobia</p><p>One more chapter after this one, I think! Thanks so much to all the readers and commenters.</p><p>Do listen to the last track on the playlist during the church scene: it really gives the gaygnst texture. </p><p>https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2su2fXpucL5isNb0X1CYSF?si=dpuGPvi2TzeYCJx49fl9Xg</p><p>My last caveat is that I don't think this sort of "pipe room" exists but you know, imagination.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">In the morning, Mycroft’s inner thighs were sore. They were sore from spreading on his lover’s lap, straining and quivering as his lover handled him. His muscles had never worked that way before. Mycroft rolled over in bed and discovered that his glutes were sore too. He was happy.</p><p class="p1">When he finally had the wherewithal to check his phone, he discovered to his surprise that Greg had not texted him, either last night or this morning. He nearly always did, after a date, and always after they’d broken some new sexual frontier. Mycroft had a flicker of anxiety, the heightened irrational kind that told him that the sex had been inadequate and Greg wanted nothing to do with him, before disciplining his mind. Surely Greg was simply still asleep.</p><p class="p1">When he still had not texted in another two hours, Mycroft took a colossal risk. “My muscles feel like I’ve run a marathon,” he texted. He imagined how Greg would reply: <em>You were spectacular for your first run</em> or <em>I’ll help you stretch </em>or even just <em>I had a good time last night. </em>But Greg didn’t reply. They’d made tentative plans for a walk that afternoon, since it was Saturday, but Greg did not call. Finally, at two o’clock, Mycroft called. Greg did not pick up the phone.</p><p class="p1">He knew from his students that this was called <em>ghosting</em>. But something stubborn and dauntless about him could not believe it was truly happening. He was a scholar trained to draw conclusions based on evidence, and here was his evidence: a flushed cheek, a desirous look, semen dried on his hip. Kind, rapturous words. A hasty departure. A lack of contact. A plan gone unconfirmed.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft waited for the shame to fall like fog. He waited for his self-perception to cloud over, and to feel immobilized. He was left waiting. Instead he felt alert, confident about his perception of events.</p><p class="p1">He called Greg again, and got no answer. He dressed quickly and walked to his flat, where no one answered the bell. He walked to King’s College and was turned away at the gate. His Corpus Christi credentials were useless here. On a weekday he could have called any number of friends, or slipped in with a student, but here he was stranded. He was now forced to contemplate the unthinkable.</p><p class="p1">“John likes Tchaikovsky, do you have advice about divorce proceedings?” Sherlock said into the phone.</p><p class="p1">“You are not married, and you knew he liked Tchaikovsky when you first met him. You learnt all those suites.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock sighed. “I cannot imagine how I allowed my judgment to become so impaired.”</p><p class="p1">Something tugged in Mycroft’s throat. “Tchaikovsky’s not so bad.”</p><p class="p1">“I have no intention of rooming with <em>sugar plums</em>, and don’t laugh, John, you should be properly embarrassed of your bad taste.” There was a long silence on the line. Finally he came back with a clatter. “You’re morose. What’s wrong with the beloved Greg?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. “Nothing,” he lied out of habit.</p><p class="p1">“We are not in the habit of speaking recreationally on the weekend, and since your energy has been primarily focused on Lestrade, a person you met through me, I can only imagine you’re calling to talk about him.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m calling to request your access to King’s,” he said, grimacing. “Can you come and let me in?”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock made a rude noise. “Have you <em>left behind your umbrella</em>, Mycroft?” He managed to make it sound dirty.</p><p class="p1">“The reason is not important.”</p><p class="p1">“All the more suggestion that the reason is <em>interesting.</em>”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft could feel his face getting hot, with rage and embarrassment. He knew that he could be entrapped this way with Sherlock, get drawn into irrational, emotional disputes. He took a deep breath. “If you come to meet me, I will tell you in person.”</p><p class="p1">“You’ll refuse when I arrive.”</p><p class="p1">“I give you my word,” Mycroft gritted out.</p><p class="p1">There was a low thud as Sherlock put the phone down. “John,” he said, dimly audible, a wry smile in his voice, “Do you want to solve a mystery?”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">He met Sherlock and John at the front gate of the college. It was now four o’clock, and Mycroft had not heard from Greg. He had oscillated a hundred times between the conviction that Greg merely did not want to see him again, did not want to trifle with him now that the thrill of his virginity had been relieved, and the more fragile, more intricate, and far more frightening possibility that something more unexpected had happened. That Greg had been slighted or upset by some combination of factors. He could not resolve this confusion until he had accessed the chapel itself and found it empty.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock took one look at him and said, “Well!”</p><p class="p1">John said, “Alright, Mycroft?”</p><p class="p1">“Hello, John.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s taken long enough,” Sherlock observed.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know what you’re hinting about, but I assume it’s repugnant,” John said cheerfully.</p><p class="p1">“You assume correctly,” Mycroft said.</p><p class="p1">“Aha!”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rolled his eyes.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock tilted his head, canny as ever, but the sharpest edge of his mockery dulled. “You promised to give the reason.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. “Greg and I had a—disagreement last night. I’ve been unable to reach him this morning. I thought I could perhaps find him—in his office.”</p><p class="p1">Even John looked like he didn’t believe this. Sherlock said, “In his office? On a Saturday? Lestrade?” But his expression said he was saving the best for last.</p><p class="p1">John was surveying Mycroft’s face, apparently finding something sobering there. “Sherlock,”he said quietly. “Mycroft doesn’t need to tell us why he needs to find Greg.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock chortled. “Indeed, he doesn’t <em>need </em>to tell us, it’s perfectly obvious.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t care what jokes you make,” Mycroft said, squeezing his eyebrows together with his hand. “I just—mm. I need to see him.”</p><p class="p1">“Because your assignation has gone wrong.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft looked up sharply. “If I say yes, will you help me?”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock froze, studying his face. “Why didn’t you say?”</p><p class="p1">The question filled Mycroft with bitterness. <em>Why didn’t you just say that you can’t play the concerto from memory, like I can? Why didn’t you just say that you’re gay too? Why didn’t you just say you knew about me sharing needles? </em>It isn’t fair to ask someone to promptly state the impossible.</p><p class="p1">He didn’t answer the question. He pushed through the gate when Sherlock unlocked it, barely conscious of Sherlock and John on his heels. A moment later, he was glad they’d come, as Sherlock directed him to Greg’s office, only a few doors down from his own. Greg was not there; the entire corridor of offices was empty.</p><p class="p1">Standing outside Greg’s locked and unlit office, John said, “Sorry, Mycroft, but is it possible that Greg—just doesn’t want to be found, right now?”</p><p class="p1">John’s compassion was, of course, far worse than Sherlock’s mockery. Mycroft closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Sherlock—do you have access to the chapel?”</p><p class="p1">They found the chapel dimly lit and nearly empty. “I’m not sure what he would be doing here anyway,” Sherlock said. “This isn’t sound reasoning.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I am not at my most reasonable,” he said. He thought of the comfort, the security, of touching Greg, feeling the heat of his breath and weight of his hands. He had so recently gained these things and already felt unmoored without them.</p><p class="p1">John said very softly to his partner, “Use your beloved little deductions for good, for once.”</p><p class="p1">“John—”</p><p class="p1">“If you can’t find Greg Lestrade on a Saturday night, just for sport, what good are your powers?” He was goading him, strategically, on Mycroft’s behalf. He felt grateful and ashamed.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock had grown quiet. Mycroft finally opened his eyes. His brother was pacing up and down the central aisle of the cathedral, one shoe untied, deep in thought. “Unfortunately I do not have all the data,” he muttered. “Should have paid more attention—should have asked questions—I hardly know Lestrade. You, brother, however.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft blushed. For a moment he’d thought Sherlock meant <em>know </em>in the biblical sense. “I don’t know how to sort the data. Unless you want to visit every pub he’s ever mentioned—.”</p><p class="p1">While Sherlock paced, John was studying Mycroft’s face. Finally he said, “My guess would be that he <em>does</em> want to be found.”</p><p class="p1">God, Mycroft hoped it was true. “I don’t think he’s <em>hiding</em>. It’s nothing so melodramatic as that. I am simply—anxious to speak to him.”</p><p class="p1">“Nevertheless,” John said, “Think of it this way. Did he ever tell you what he turns to when he’s distressed? Is it possible he’s—smoking, somewhere?”</p><p class="p1">But smoking was not, in fact, Greg’s signature vice. He had another idol. Mycroft sighed. “I should have known,” he breathed.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock turned on his heels. “What?”</p><p class="p1">“You should have known, more than anyone,” Mycroft scolded, thinking of the emotional support violins he kept in his office and car and home.</p><p class="p1">“Where are we going?”</p><p class="p1">“They found him a spare cathedral,” Mycroft said, and hurried out the door of the original cathedral in a hurry.</p><p class="p1">John and Sherlock trailed him to the church he had visited on his first proper date with Greg. It was a Saturday, and the building was unlocked, with clergy coming and going. But the sound emanating from the church itself was unmistakable. “He’s playing the Fugue in D Minor,” Sherlock said as he wrenched open the heavy cathedral door. “Not melodramatic, my arse.”</p><p class="p1">Because it was Greg, raising a column of Bach, a column of sound, like necromancers raise the dead. He faced away from them at the far end of the church, wearing only a thin T-shirt and jeans.</p><p class="p1">The sight of his hair, his shoulders, the particularities of his posture, sent desire and grief running through Mycroft. They ran up and down the scale with the movements of the fugue.</p><p class="p1">“Talk to him.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft pressed his hand over his mouth. “I can’t.”</p><p class="p1">John and Sherlock looked at each other for a long moment, a world of intimacy and mutual knowledge shared in their expressions. “Go,” John said finally, “Gauge the situation, please. And don’t be horrible.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m never horrible,” Sherlock said, and half-ran down the stone aisle of the nave toward the organ.</p><p class="p1">When he reached it, the music stopped abruptly. “Sherlock?” They could faintly hear Greg say. The rest of the conversation was in low, inaudible tones. Mycroft, blushing horribly, was left to wait with John, who said after a moment, “He’s been—kind to you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft did not know whether or not it was a question. “Yes,” he said, “invariably.”</p><p class="p1">After what seemed like a long time, Sherlock returned, his face neutral and unconcerned. When he reached them, he looked at Mycroft and said with simple sincerity, “Tell him you love him.”</p><p class="p1">“Sherlock!”</p><p class="p1">“You wanted me to help, I have helped in every way I know how. Now I think, John, that we should go. If we hear any more fugues as we leave, we’ll know our efforts have been in vain.”</p><p class="p1">When they’d gone, and the music did not resume, Mycroft gathered his courage and processed up the aisle of the church. Greg was still sitting at the organ, not playing and not moving either. He turned when Mycroft approached, and there was such gentleness in his eyes that Mycroft sat down next to him. “Hello,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“Hi.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry I’ve disrespected your privacy by coming here. I became worried when you didn’t answer your phone.”</p><p class="p1">Greg grimaced. “I was going to call back.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft stared at his hands. Cold dread was heavy inside him. “Then this is an instance of my overreacting to—becoming unreasonably attached, and I should probably—” He stood on unsteady legs to leave.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft, wait.” He reached out and grabbed Mycroft’s wrist, and then recoiled, pulling his hand back like he’d been burnt. Pain was inscribed upon his face. “Are you alright?” He asked.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was so perplexed that for a moment he could not speak. “Am I—of course I am, I have been so worried about <em>you</em>, I haven’t heard from you, and I thought perhaps you regretted—. Or that something else had gone wrong.” He knew his face was scarlet. He could not meet Greg’s eyes.</p><p class="p1">Greg tilted his head to try to catch his gaze, and when thwarted, cast his eyes over the church, where a custodial worker was coming in to clean and a church volunteer was tacking up flyers at the entrance. He said, “Can we go back into the pipe room? We can speak privately there.” He led Mycroft down from the organ console, to a side door that opened into a small room surrounded by organ pipes. There was a small table covered in maintenance materials and sheet music. The room was claustrophobic and audio-phobic, every spare surface covered in carpeting to muffle excess sound. Mycroft tried and failed to imagine what it would be like when the organ was played.</p><p class="p1">They faced each other but did not make eye contact. Mycroft could see, however, that Greg looked as though he had hardly slept. He ran a hand shakily over his hair. “The only thing I regret about last night,” he began, and Mycroft’s heart fell through the floor, “is that I clearly pushed you into something before you were ready, and I cannot blame you for wanting to distance yourself from me.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s mouth fell open. He struggled for a long moment to find words. “You are mistaken,” he managed at last, and his voice sounded impossibly small, the timbre flat and thin, in this airless room.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t have to try to make me feel better about this,” Greg blazed ahead. “I know you will, because you’re kind, and you care for me, and I allowed you to feel comfortable—. But I feel wretched that I took advantage of you as I did. We didn’t discuss, or plan, and I let you think that—<em>it</em> was important to me.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s blood ran cold when he saw the self-contempt in Greg’s expression. Without knowing what he was doing, he held Greg’s face between his hands, stubbly cheeks against smooth palms. “Greg,” he said, “I absolutely can’t countenance this.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s eyes closed. His breathing was audible in the awful silent room. “No?”</p><p class="p1">“A-answer me this.” Mycroft swallowed. “Are you—attracted to me?”</p><p class="p1">Greg screwed his eyes even tighter. When he spoke his voice was rough. “<em>Desperately</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Despite everything, Mycroft felt a surge of adrenaline. “D-did you enjoy yourself last night? Outside of worrying about me?”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Yes</em>. Of course.”</p><p class="p1">The relief was overwhelming. Helplessly, he leant forward and kissed Greg’s mouth, chaste and sweet. He felt doubly relieved to have the contact reestablished that way. <em>I’ve never felt more at ease than when he’s touching me. </em></p><p class="p1">Tentatively Greg opened his eyes. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft draped his arms over Greg’s strong shoulders and pressed their chests together. He’d never felt bolder. “I’m thinking that last night was one of best evenings—s. That I’ve ever had.”</p><p class="p1">Greg chuckled, as if in disbelief.</p><p class="p1">“I wanted—I can’t <em>stand </em>for you to erase my agency like this. To act like I don’t know what I’m saying yes to. I can be—<em>sexual</em>, too, whether or not it’s new for me. I wanted it. God, Greg, I wanted it.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was shaking a little in his arms. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p class="p1">“Hmm.”</p><p class="p1">“You got so quiet—you hardly looked at me, and I just thought—<em>Christ</em>, I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft laughed unhappily against his cheek. “I was quiet? Does that sound out of character for me? I was <em>quiet </em>because new endorphins were flooding my system. I was overwhelmed. I was—content. I didn’t need to speak.”</p><p class="p1">Greg raised a hand between their chests to rub at his face. “I’ve been so stupid. I should’ve <em>stayed</em>, I should’ve talked to you. I was so worried to impose.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft stroked his cheek, utterly mystified. He remembered Greg singing on the way home, and realized that he had been happy and anxious at the same time, trying to distract himself, channel the emotion into noise. “You are always so confident, so at ease. I never thought to reassure you. I’ve always been a flustered and hapless mess in front of you.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, shaking his head. “I pretend. People have always—I’ve had that said to me before. It’s true that I am confident, in some areas. I can direct any number of motets… Of course you fluster me, Mycroft. Don’t be absurd. I—.” He stopped short. “I care a great deal for you. And for your opinion.”</p><p class="p1">“I can’t imagine why.”</p><p class="p1">“I know the reputation I have. I’ve… cultivated it at certain moments. But as soon as something of substance happens, when things matter. I’m as vulnerable as anyone else. God, I couldn’t bear to think that I’d hurt you.” He buried his face in Mycroft’s shoulder. Nervous, Mycroft brought his hand up to cuff the back of his neck. Greg said into Mycroft’s jumper, “When you saw me with that bloke at that restaurant—you can’t imagine how embarrassed I was. I felt so sordid. All I wanted was to spend more time with you, find out if you were—gay, or something, and I’d tried to distract myself by bedding someone else. I hated myself for it.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s chest hurt. “<em>Greg.</em>”</p><p class="p1">Greg took a long shaky breath, then a laugh. “I have to get out of this room.”</p><p class="p1">They went out into the church, gathered their things, and then walked to Greg’s flat nearby. Greg poured them both glasses of sparkling water. He scraped his hands over his face, harsh and bracing. Mycroft sat back, watching him. He was experiencing a different form of love from the first kind. No longer was his affection distant and abstract, bitter in its pining. Now his love was familiar and affectionate and mundane and passionate. It knew Greg’s scents and his bad moods. It was devastating.</p><p class="p1">Finally Greg said, “I told you a little bit once about how I came out.”</p><p class="p1">“You were young.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, fifteen. My parents—didn’t take it well. They said—. We don’t have to talk about this.”</p><p class="p1">“Greg.”</p><p class="p1">He breathed out with puffed cheeks. “They said they were worried about letting me—be around my brother. There was—a lot of rhetoric in the culture about gays being sexual predators. And then I had a terrible crush on a friend, who didn’t return it, and when he found out…”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt like his heart was breaking. “Oh Greg,” he breathed.</p><p class="p1">Greg gave a mirthless, brittle <em>ha! </em>“All this was thirty years ago. I thought it was all in the past. But sometimes the idea that I am a danger to someone, that <em>wanting </em>you is wrong—. It’s difficult to shake.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s difficult, with me, because I am—inexperienced. Did not have a professed gay identity.”</p><p class="p1">His eyes closed. “I don’t want you to be ashamed of that for a moment. It’s not your fault.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course I’m ashamed of it.” Mycroft leant forward to hold Greg’s hand. “But you ought to be able to imagine when I was least ashamed of it.”</p><p class="p1">“Mm?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s cheeks began to heat. “When I was sat in your lap, trousers open, your hands on me, you telling me I was beautiful… I have never felt more right, or more safe. I’m forty-two, Greg. I know what I’m saying.”</p><p class="p1">Greg turned his face sharply away. After a moment he made a tiny sound that indicated he was crying.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft remembered what he had done when Mycroft had had a migraine and lost his nerve, the care and slowness of that evening. He mimicked it now; he slid to the floor at Greg’s feet and pressed his cheek into Greg’s knee. Waited patiently for the tears to ebb. When he turned toward Mycroft again, Mycroft said, “You already know that your parents were monsters for behaving that way, and that there has never been anything wrong with you.”</p><p class="p1">Fresh tears welled in Greg’s eyes, and he blinked them back. “Of course,” he said hoarsely. “But these things linger.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft remembered a hundred times it had been implied to him that Sherlock would get to be the genius, and then, later, that Sherlock would get to be the gay brother. “I understand.”</p><p class="p1">“I never meant to revisit that past on you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled dimly, and shifted to return to the sofa at Greg’s side. “Mm,” he reflected. “I study the distant past, you know. An era of history that is very very difficult for us to reach, and to understand. Sometimes it seems utterly irrelevant. I would not be in that line of work if I thought things stayed in the past. If I imagined that anything really ended.”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned, nodding. “But that’s horrible.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes, it is. But at the same time—” he smiled, hesitating.</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">“Then it means that in some sense, I am still watching you conduct the St. John Passion. Or sitting with you in the Seven Swans, dying for the courage to touch you. The echoes of those events are very present with us.”</p><p class="p1">One of Greg’s signature smiles, the sort that could outshine the sun, spread over his face. “How so?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft, loathe to spin out the conceit in a cutesy way, simply kissed him, slow and sweet. Then the kiss deepened, his mouth opening to let Greg inside, and then Mycroft sucked on his lower lip in the way he knew now made him crazy. Greg’s hands were grasping at his waist. Just as suddenly, it slowed, and they breathed for a moment against each other’s cheeks. “I won’t forget, then,” Greg said.</p><p class="p1">“Forget what?”</p><p class="p1">“That the echo of your bravery is here with us.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was touched, but he laughed. “Perhaps.”</p><p class="p1">Greg traced the line of Mycroft’s neck with one fingertip, raising a shiver of pleasure. “What do you want, then? Since you are courageous enough to say it?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft gritted his teeth with desire. He was blushing, he knew, though hopefully Greg was too close to see. “I want—to touch you. I want to make you come.”</p><p class="p1">Greg shifted. “That’s really not necessary, I think we should take things slowly…”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft made a little noise of frustration. “I can’t <em>go </em>any more slowly. Please, Gregory. Unless you are—too distressed, we could—”</p><p class="p1">Greg whined, low in his throat. When he spoke, his voice was rough and smoldering. “I don’t believe you have any idea what power you have over me.”</p><p class="p1">Heat zinged through Mycroft’s body. “Is that so?” He tried to keep his voice level.</p><p class="p1">“I love seeing you smile. I would do—” his breath caught as Mycroft kissed his neck. “I would do anything to make you feel comfortable—and at ease, and confident—”</p><p class="p1">“And turned on?”</p><p class="p1">“Mm, yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Gregory.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Please</em>.” </p><p class="p1">With tactical strategy, Mycroft put his mouth on the spot on Greg’s ear that had made him so wild last time. He teased the earlobe between his teeth. Greg’s hips bucked involuntarily. “Fuck,” he muttered, his hands sweeping and scratching over Mycroft’s back. “Everything about you makes me want you. Your voice, the things you say, your skin, god—. Your arse, your <em>hands</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was too overcome to respond, so he kissed Greg with all his might. He was already canting his hips forward, desperate for friction. “Please,” he gasped, “Take me to bed.”</p><p class="p1">Greg obliged him, leading him by the hand toward the bedroom. “If there’s anything you don’t want—”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft shook his head. “I just want to touch—I want to know what you feel like.”</p><p class="p1">Greg tipped him over onto the bed, groaning, and pinned him with knees stretched over Mycroft’s hips. They couldn’t bear to not be kissing for more than a moment. With his back flat on the bed, Mycroft’s hands were free to roam with greed over Greg’s body, feeling the contours of his shoulders and lats and the small of his back, a horribly seductive spot. They drifted lower to squeeze his lush arse. Everything about him was both toned and soft, familiar and foreign. The scent of his cologne was spicy and masculine against Mycroft’s face. He felt arousal swarm over him like a hot flash. “Please, please,” he was mumbling.</p><p class="p1">“How do you—what do you want me to—” Greg was trying to reconfigure, distracted and stumbling over his words.</p><p class="p1">“Clothes off, we should have—started with that.” Mycroft could hardly catch his breath. Greg slid back and stood up so he could strip off his clothes. “All the way, please.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was distracted from his own sweaty and hasty disrobing by watching Greg’s. Who pulled his T-shirt over his head, mussing his hair, and thrust down his jeans and pants in one movement. Bared to the dim light of the bedroom, he looked both vulnerable and virile. Mycroft drank in the sight of him: the definition of his chest and arms, the slight softness of his trim stomach, his narrow hips and pale, hairy thighs. His cock stood out from his body, flushed and proud, and Mycroft couldn’t look away from it.</p><p class="p1">“Come off it,” Greg scolded, his voice husky. “You too.” He reached for Mycroft’s jumper and pulled it over his head, then worked him out of his pants.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft gasped. “I l-like it when—”</p><p class="p1">Greg smiled. “When I manhandle you? Good to know, darling.” He pressed a kiss to Mycroft’s stomach, and then his bare hip. “You are so <em>tempting</em>,” he growled, and nipped Mycroft’s skin into his mouth, drawing blood to the surface and making Mycroft cry out. When he pulled off, leaving an impressive bruise behind, he said, “But you wanted—I’m supposed to be letting you touch. Where do you want me, love?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft couldn’t decide. He wanted to pump Greg’s cock in his hand, the way Greg had done for him; he wanted to get his mouth on him, though the prospect was daunting. Most of all he wanted Greg to get off by dominating him, in whatever beginner’s way. He knew he was thinking too much, still analyzing, and he needed to give things up to his body. “I want you to—can you f-fuck my thighs?”</p><p class="p1">Greg moaned into Mycroft’s chest. “Oh fuck, yes.” He rolled off for a moment and found some lube in the bedside table. <em>Next to the batons</em>, Mycroft thought with fondness. Greg slicked his cock while Mycroft watched, then spread the gel gingerly on Mycroft’s inner thighs. For a long time they didn’t speak, finding their positions on the bed. Greg seemed nervous to pose Mycroft facedown, but this was by far the most effective position, and Mycroft took a dirty, exhilarating thrill in being exposed like this, vulnerable and submissive. It was heady to realize that he liked it.</p><p class="p1">Greg propped his knees on either side of Mycroft’s hips, one hand coming up to slide over his arse, appreciative. “I’m going to take such good care of you,” he whispered.</p><p class="p1">With that, Mycroft’s analytical mind conclusively departed. “<em>Fuck</em>,” he bit into the pillow. “Fuck me, <em>please</em>.”</p><p class="p1">The first slide of Greg’s hot, rigid cock between his legs was shocking, more invasive than he’d expected. He loved how it felt. He squeezed his thighs tighter together and heard Greg’s breath catch in his throat. He rasped, “You’re so tight.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft whimpered. His own cock was rubbing between his stomach and the duvet, both too abrasive and not enough. Greg’s cock was pistoling through his legs, growing slicker with precome and sweat. The whole thing was desperate and awkward, flushed and and animal. Mycroft felt at once more more at home and more far away from himself than he ever had. <em>I’m going to make him come. </em>Greg’s hand was imprecise and holding too hard at his waist, his hips slamming into Mycroft’s arse and the back of his thighs. Gradually his breath grew more ragged, his thrusts fiercer. “Mycr—<em>oh</em>,” Greg groaned. “Fuck, fuck.”</p><p class="p1">“I want it,” Mycroft gritted out. He himself was nowhere near coming.</p><p class="p1">“I’m gonna—I can—” He put an unsteady hand down, as if to withdraw.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft flung his hand back to grab for Greg’s hip. “Don’t you dare,” he said, “I want you to come—I want to—feel it.”</p><p class="p1">“Fuck, Mycroft, I’m—oh, <em>Jesus</em>—” His mumbling became incoherent as every muscle went rigid, his hips pummeling Mycroft gloriously into the bed, and he came, wet and thick, between Mycroft’s legs. He jerked and bucked until he was spent, when he slumped off to one side.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft’s thighs were sticky with come, his hair mussed from rubbing against the pillows. He turned over, trembling, and hauled Greg against his body. Greg’s breath came hot and humid against his neck. “Gorgeous,” he murmured into Mycroft’s skin. “You are incredible.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft couldn’t stop touching him. He had to prove to himself that he was real. Every part was extraordinary: his wrist, his chin, his nipple, the outline of his ribs. “Thank you,” he said, and suddenly his throat felt tight. “I love—I loved it.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re thanking <em>me?</em>” Greg grabbed his face and kissed him through a smile. “I still need to take care of you, don’t I?”</p><p class="p1">In the rush of emotion Mycroft had nearly forgotten his own throbbing erection. He gave an awkward half-laugh.</p><p class="p1">“Would you like my mouth?” Greg asked, a statement so close to one of Mycroft’s fantasies that his vision nearly whited out.</p><p class="p1">“I—don’t think I could take it, at this time. It really—ahem, won’t take much.”</p><p class="p1">“I could drag it out.”</p><p class="p1">“No! Please, er, no, I need—.”</p><p class="p1">Greg kissed his shoulder, then his neck, then his mouth, slow and filthy. “Let me take care of it. Let me make you feel a tiny fraction of how good you make me feel, at least.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft whined, and again when Greg closed his hand around his cock. He’d apparently procured more lube for the task, because his hand was slick and smooth, sliding over the head, down the shaft, and around down to tease his balls. Mycroft’s hips bucked up into empty air.</p><p class="p1">“Mm,” Greg said, his eyes bright like he’d discovered something. He wrapped his hand around Mycroft’s cock again, far too loosely. “Fuck my fist,” he whispered. “Show me how badly you want it.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft cried aloud. Unbidden, his hips snapped up. His cock made a wet, filthy sound in Greg’s fist.</p><p class="p1">“Fuck.”</p><p class="p1">He did it again, and again. As he grew tired, Greg slowly stroked him through each thrust, torturously light, until every muscle in his body was impossibly tense, teetering on the edge of orgasm. “Come for me, beautiful man,” Greg murmured, and scrubbed his hand up and down Mycroft’s cock faster than ever, and Mycroft came until he couldn’t breathe. He fell back into a dark, half-conscious place of pleasure and exhaustion.</p><p class="p1">When he blinked himself present again, Greg was wiping his chest with a damp flannel. “It’s alright,” he said, “Sleep.”</p><p class="p1">That was all he remembered until he awoke in darkness. By Greg’s ugly clock radio it was 11:30. Greg was asleep next to him, his face slack and young. He stirred when Mycroft sat up. “Come back to bed,” he mumbled reflexively, as if he assumed Mycroft would try to leave.</p><p class="p1">“I’m not going anywhere. Just getting a glass of water.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ll—get it.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re asleep, ridiculous man.” Mycroft kissed his head and got out of bed. Every muscle protested, a mild ache that made pride and desire thrill in his chest. He filled two glasses of water and brought them back to bed, leaving one on the far night table for Greg. When he slipped between the sheets, Greg threw an arm over him, pulling him close.</p><p class="p1">“Will you stay?” Greg said into his shoulder, still mostly asleep. Heat was radiating off his naked body in waves.</p><p class="p1">“Of course I’ll stay,” Mycroft said, and he did.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter is indulgent and sappy but I figured you wouldn't mind!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">The following Saturday, after a morning of marking essays, Mycroft met Greg at the spare cathedral. It turned out that they had a spare piano as well, in a small devotional room with tiny, dingy stain glass windows. “Will this do?” Greg asked as he turned on the lights. “It’s all they had.”</p><p class="p1">It struck Mycroft that this was all he had ever wanted: privacy, a room of his own, with the knowledge of warm-hearted company nearby. He was too shy to kiss Greg, but he said, “It’s perfect.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, pleased, and gently touched the small of his back as he left to return to the organ.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had not sat at a piano in many years. For a moment he merely looked at the keys. Familiarity and intimidation warred in him. He closed his eyes and let his fingers take over, playing the little ditty he had used to perform to infuriate Sherlock. It was the first piece Sherlock had ever composed, at age 5, and very simple and sweet. Sherlock, of course, had come to hate it, viewing it as impossibly naive and saccharine, and Mycroft had memorized it to tease him. The song didn’t seem mocking now, though. It reminded me him of that adolescent time, which had been so much safer and so much less free.</p><p class="p1">After Sherlock’s piece, he did a few scales, surprised at the depth of his muscle memory. Then he opened the book of partitas Greg had lent him. The pieces were light and springy and clear-cut. As he stumbled through them, badly and then less badly, there was an undercurrent in his mind dedicated to the look on Greg’s face when he’d said, <em>I used to know all the partitas</em>. Greg’s eyes had slipped closed, his expression spelling out… temptation. It made something hot and anxious and excited smolder under Mycroft’s skin.</p><p class="p1">After an hour and a half, Greg slipped back into the room. Mycroft was keenly aware of him, his personal storm of good humor and good scents and disorderly clothes, though he kept on playing. When Greg came in and watched him play, with a smile on his face, Mycroft blushed under the attention.</p><p class="p1">“Actually, can I—” Greg started.</p><p class="p1">“Yes?”</p><p class="p1">“No, never mind.”</p><p class="p1">“No, please say.” Mycroft’s hands stilled over the keys.</p><p class="p1">Greg shook his head. “You’ll get tired of my bossiness soon, certainly.” A tightening in Mycroft’s abdomen told him that probably wasn’t true. “I don’t mean to backseat you. But I think you’ll have better agility if you change your posture slightly. It’s probably only because you haven’t played in a while. I can see your technique is very strong.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft resumed his playing posture, arching his fingers over the keys and trying to sit up straight, as if to say, <em>Show me. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg circled around behind him and stood at his back, so close Mycroft could feel the heat of his body. Awareness prickled over his skin. Goosebumps rose on his forearms.</p><p class="p1">Greg bent over him, his mouth at Mycroft’s ear, one hand at his side, under his arm, the other at the base of his spine. “Loosen it here,” he murmured, “and engage through the core.” His voice was soft and authoritative. His fingers were gentle.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt his body obey. He felt it rebel—in the form of a wave of arousal so overwhelming that it stripped him of language.</p><p class="p1">“That’s better,” Greg said in his ear, and blood rushed to Mycroft’s cock. He would not be able to stand up anytime soon.</p><p class="p1">“Thank you,” he managed, his mouth dry.</p><p class="p1">Greg must have been able to sense the effect he was having, but he merely dropped a kiss to Mycroft’s shoulder and backed off. Mycroft’s back felt cold in his absence. He instantly felt more clear-headed. He blinked furiously, trying to remember where he was.</p><p class="p1">“Are you going to play it for me?”</p><p class="p1">“I should be ashamed to play for an expert,” Mycroft demurred, a blush rising again.</p><p class="p1">Greg scoffed. “I’m not exactly a concert pianist.”</p><p class="p1">“No…”</p><p class="p1">“You certainly don’t have to.”</p><p class="p1">But the look on Greg’s face—the way his eyes had fallen shut—Mycroft <em>did </em>have to. There were no rules, but Greg couldn’t create an expectation-free world. Mycroft played the partita—not without mistakes, or failures of flair—but it was serviceable. After a page or two, he eased back and looked at Greg, only to find that he was being rather fiercely regarded. “What?” Mycroft said flatly.</p><p class="p1">Greg pressed his lips together, something unreadable in his expression. “You play very well,” he said after a moment.</p><p class="p1">“You’re kind to support my musicianship.”</p><p class="p1">Greg gave a startled laugh. “<em>Kind </em>is not exactly the word I would use. Nothing so selfless.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft spun on the bench to face him. “Strange man.”</p><p class="p1">“I believe I’ve never been anything but utterly transparent. In my whole life. Especially with you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft tilted his head. “Surely you don’t think that.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hand twitched, a gesture repressed, but then it came up anyway and held the side of Mycroft’s face. Just for a moment, a heart stopping disaster of intimacy. “You are a terrible reader of people when it comes to good things about yourself. You dismissed all the evidence.”</p><p class="p1">There was a painful lump in Mycroft’s throat. “I see,” he said finally.</p><p class="p1">“Come on.” Greg grabbed his shoulder and shook it gently. “We’re going to have burgers, right? Let’s go have burgers.”</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">Late that night, they laid in Greg’s bed, naked and hastily cleaned up after rather passionate, urgent sex. Mycroft’s breath had long since settled but his muscles were still a little trembly. He laid very still in the bed, his head on Greg’s chest. He felt very content and very restless. He did not know the rules. Ought he to be getting up to leave? Falling promptly asleep? Telling amusing anecdotes? Cuddling? He didn’t want to do any of these things, didn’t have the equipment.</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hand ran over the top of his head, ruffling his hair. He shifted a little underneath Mycroft, squirming. Greg was not particularly given to sitting or lying still. He said, “Can I ask you something?”</p><p class="p1">“Certainly,” Mycroft said, ignoring the spike of anxiety.</p><p class="p1">“Did you ever—think about other men? Or notice them?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft rolled over so he could feel Greg’s bare skin underneath his cheek and mouth. “You’re asking if I’m interested in men, or only in you.”</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed, shocked and chastened. “I could try to deny it.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft kissed the skin just below his nipple. He felt strangely flattered by Greg’s curiosity. “Yes, I did,” he said slowly. “I thought of myself as exclusively interested in other men—but it did not occur to me to… come out, as it were.”</p><p class="p1">“Why not?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft thought about it. “I could say that it was seeing Sherlock struggle, the treatment he received… but in truth I think it’s something more banal. I thought it only worth doing if there was—a person—a man—who would make the matter obvious. Without having a partner to present, I couldn’t see the purpose.”</p><p class="p1">“And?” Greg’s voice was canny. <em>I know there’s more. </em></p><p class="p1">“And it seemed highly improbable that that sort of person would present himself.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s hand rubbed over Mycroft’s side and hip, affectionate and possessive. “Sorry, I’m asking too many questions, but—why do you think—did you ever <em>look</em>?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. “Certainly not. I was too intimidated—well. You know quite well my cowardice on this point.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was quiet for a moment, then he whispered, “Come up here.”</p><p class="p1">Obediently Mycroft scooched up so that his head lay on Greg’s shoulder, their faces very close. Greg ran his thumb over Mycroft’s mouth, greed evident in his expression, and then kissed him. A dry, chaste little thing, conducted between two naked men, the scent of sex redolent around them, in soiled sheets. Mycroft’s heart was hammering.</p><p class="p1">Greg said, his lips still very close, “Why do you think I asked you to be my quitting accountability partner? Tell me that, academic whizkid.”</p><p class="p1">“I—because you wanted to quit smoking, and we were acquaintances.”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed, his breath hot on Mycroft’s face. “Daft boy,” he muttered, sending desperate desire through each of Mycroft’s cells. He couldn’t hide anything, lying here like this. Belatedly he realized he didn’t need to, didn’t want to. In any case, if Greg noticed Mycroft’s tired cock hardening again, he didn’t say anything.</p><p class="p1">“I wanted to get to know you better. I wanted to—<em>flirt </em>with you. I couldn’t figure you out, and you kind of, um, intrigued me.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft didn’t answer.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t you remember when I started describing Jan to you, describing my <em>type</em>, and I was basically describing you? Going on and on about how I like tall, fair, reserved men. I was so flustered. I was sure you could tell. For <em>weeks </em>I thought you were trying to let me down easy.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft couldn’t make this make sense. His mind whirred. Finally he said, “I don’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">Greg wrapped his arms around him, anchoring him. “I <em>told </em>you. You ignored all the evidence.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft felt suddenly close to tears. “No one has ever—made inroads with me like that. I have never experienced a pursuit. I wouldn’t know how to recognize it.”</p><p class="p1">Greg scoffed, as if annoyed. “I think they probably <em>have</em>, and you just didn’t realize it. Silly man.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was quiet, trying to process this host of information. <em>I am Greg Lestrade’s type. I made Greg Lestrade blush. Months ago. I am someone’s type. </em></p><p class="p1">Greg’s hands didn’t stop moving now, drawing arcing shapes over Mycroft’s back. “Let me ask you a more obviously selfish question now, if I’m still getting away with them. If you’d never—if you thought there would never be a man to test the theory with, what was different—with me?”</p><p class="p1">A flush of embarrassed, trapped heat suffused Mycroft. He twitched in Greg’s arms.</p><p class="p1">“Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“I—why do you think I said yes, to being quitting accountability partners? Despite being generally unsociable?”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know.”</p><p class="p1">“Because I—from the moment I first saw you. Mm. I don’t—I wouldn’t normally<span class="s1">—</span>”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s fingers were impossibly gentle. <em>You’re safe</em>, they said. “You certainly don’t have to say.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft swallowed. “I have cultivated feelings—attraction—something stronger than both those words, for you, since the first time I saw you. I lived in fear of you discerning this, and pitying me, and I—. I would never have had the courage to do anything had I not known that you felt—. When you told me that you wanted to kiss me, I was absolutely shocked. That is why I ran away. I thought I wanted it too badly to see the situation clearly.”</p><p class="p1">Greg listened to this terrifying speech in absolute quiet, and then he shifted underneath Mycroft to envelop him in a forceful hug, rolling him over to lay on top of him. He said into Mycroft’s neck something inaudible, a mishmash of syllables that were something like, “I love you.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was trembling, crushed to the bed underneath Greg’s body. He’d never been so exposed, so covered. Safe and sweaty and he couldn’t breathe and his calf itched. Somebody loved him.</p><p class="p1">Greg whispered, more clearly this time, “I have never, not for a moment, pitied you. Only admired you, and wanted to know you better. God—wanted to kiss you. I felt like a pervert about it, like I said. But that’s my own baggage. I just—Christ, Mycroft.”</p><p class="p1">“Hmm?” Mycroft shifted slightly so he could breathe again, without all Greg’s weight on him. He touched his favorite place, the soft, dimpled flesh right at the base of Greg’s spine, right above his arse.</p><p class="p1">“You make me <em>crazy</em>,” Greg breathed, and captured his face for a kiss.</p><p class="p1">In its aftermath, his heart expanding furiously, Mycroft kissed his chin and neck and shoulder and then propped his face up on Greg’s chin. “You are the most remarkable person I have ever met,” he said. “You have changed my life.”</p><p class="p1">Greg was smiling so hard. He ducked his face into Mycroft’s hair.</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">It was one of those terrible weeks of July when London—when the entire south of England—grew unbearably hot. This did not happen often enough to acclimatize anyone to it, least of all Mycroft. Even Greg’s cheeks were pink, so he was sure his own were bright red. “An ice bath before tonight, I think,” Greg said, standing on the curb in Seven Dials. He was wearing a crumpled linen shirt that was already sticking to his back a little with sweat. It was frankly absurd how he managed to look so attractive getting off a train in the heat, his hair mussed and movements languid. Mycroft felt wilted and high-strung next to him.</p><p class="p1">When he shifted to stand even with Greg, waiting for the light to change, Greg turned toward him and smiled. He ran his fingertips over Mycroft’s shoulder and down his back, a possessive little touch. “I’d try to hold your hand,” he said, “but I’m hoping you won’t find out how sweaty I am.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft was charmed, but he only managed a thin smile. He was overwhelmed by the city and anxious about the day and night to come.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, you alright? Is your head bothering you?”</p><p class="p1">Again Mycroft waited for Greg’s solicitiousness, his fussing, to bother him, but the irritation didn’t come. “Greg,” he said, taking pleasure in saying his name, “I’m perfectly fine. It was just a migraine. Yesterday.”</p><p class="p1">Greg frowned, fake-pouting. “You just get so pale, and limp. I don’t like to see you in pain.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft smiled at him in wonder, momentarily forgetting the heat and heavy overnight bag in one hand. “Where have they been hiding you?”</p><p class="p1">“In the quire, with the other queers,” Greg laughed. He put his hand on Mycroft’s back to indicate they could cross the street.</p><p class="p1">They passed theater marqees and lots of little shops that sold only one kind of thing. Mycroft had never felt further from Cambridge. Then he looked at Greg, who’d lived in Vienna and Washington and London and Cambridge, who was the rightful prince of Kings College Chapel, and felt at home. His throat suddenly swelled with it. <em>I am at home when I am with you</em>. He could say it if he wanted to. It would probably please Greg.</p><p class="p1">He fussed with the collar of his own shirt, thin white cotton. Mycroft liked to feel crisp, and he did not feel crisp. He could feel his hair curling. “Sherlock will be cruel,” he blurted. “More than before. He’ll see you as a way to get to me.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s eyebrows rose, laconic, as he separated from Mycroft momentarily to weave around a pillar. “Cruel?”</p><p class="p1">“Well. Catty. Bitchy. Would that conform more to stereotype?”</p><p class="p1">Greg huffed. “You’re hurling stones at your own people, darling. I’m not afraid of Sherlock Holmes. It’s just lunch. It’s just lunch, isn’t it?”</p><p class="p1">“You’re very naïve,” Mycroft told him, and received a laugh. They were standing in front of the hotel now.</p><p class="p1">“May I kiss you? Here?”</p><p class="p1">“Er—I—”</p><p class="p1">“It’s alright, never mind,” Greg said, moving for the revolving door, but Mycroft caught his arm.</p><p class="p1">“Please do.”</p><p class="p1">The smile on Greg’s face was, as always, worth any vulnerability, perhaps any humiliation. Perhaps any international crisis. He bunched one hand in Mycroft’s limp shirt and pecked him, quick and sweet, and then again. He smelt of sweat and sunscreen and his cologne, raising rather arousing scent memory, and he was here in London saying <em>I’m not afraid of Sherlock Holmes. </em>All the things Mycroft wanted to say were crowded in his chest.</p><p class="p1">“Let me handle Sherlock,” Greg said, and kissed him on the cheek for good measure.</p><p class="p1">When they walked up to the restaurant, Sherlock and John were sitting outside, half-submerged in Pimms Cups. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?” Greg asked, clapping Sherlock on the shoulder and startling him half out of the chair. “You can’t conduct dehydrated. Not at this do. I’ve <em>tried it</em>, mate.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock looked distinctly unimpressed. “I assure you this is not the strongest substance I’ve had in my system before conducting an orchestra.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft winced. He didn’t like to remember the Benjamin Britten fiasco of 2009.</p><p class="p1">“It’s hot,” John observed. “When it’s hot, you have to have Pimms. Alright, Mycroft? You two have an okay time getting into town?” It was the first time they were greeting John and Sherlock as a couple. Mycroft flinched at the “you two.” <em>This is to be proud of</em>, he told himself.</p><p class="p1">“Perfectly fine.” Mycroft could feel himself going stiff, could feel himself not making eye contact with anyone. He was embarrassed about it, which only made matters worse. “I used to come to the British Library every day to do archival research a few summers ago,” he blurted, and immediately felt embarrassed.</p><p class="p1">“See?” Greg said, abstract and soothing, his hand on Mycroft’s back. “Sit, here, I’ll go on the other side. Well, wait—what would you like?”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft didn’t particularly want to be left to the wolves, but he couldn’t protest. “Mineral water.”</p><p class="p1">“Pimms, got it, great.” He disappeared into the restaurant.</p><p class="p1">There was a little lull, and then Sherlock said with a chunk of cucumber in his mouth, “Have you told him about your nervous little habit?” He was looking Mycroft up and down.</p><p class="p1">“What nervous habit?” John said.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft should have known that Sherlock would pick up every one of his neuroses, no matter how he attempted to conceal them. Suddenly, though, seeing Greg emerge again with two ebulliently garnished Pimms cups and one mineral water in his hands, Mycroft was sick of his own fear. He could not mince and apologize over every little jab for the rest of his life. He would let down Greg, Greg’s confidence in him. “He means that I sometimes get migraines when I’m anxious. This one was yesterday. I’m fine now.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock flicked his eyes over at Greg as he came back to the table, as if to say, <em>he makes you anxious</em>.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft returned his own glare: <em>this makes me anxious. </em></p><p class="p1">“Mycroft is built of strong stuff, and this is fortifying,” Greg said, passing him his drink.</p><p class="p1">“So!” John said, perching his chin on his fist. “You two.”</p><p class="p1">“We two,” Greg returned gravely. Then he glanced at Mycroft, all amusement.</p><p class="p1"><em>It pleases him</em>, Mycroft realized helplessly, <em>to be seen with me</em>. Crazed with affection, he grabbed Greg’s hand under the table. It was sweaty, broad, familiar.</p><p class="p1">Greg looked at their joined hands, and then up at him, and bit his lip. “Drink your drink,” he said, with a sharp audible edge of flirtation.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock shifted in his seat. “I see that Mycroft is adjusting his attitude to being told what to do.”</p><p class="p1">“Perhaps it strikes him differently when Greg does it than when his shit brother does it,” John suggested, and Greg laughed.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock ignored this. “You two decided to quit smoking. Or that was your resolution.”</p><p class="p1">“It was all John’s brilliant plan.”</p><p class="p1">“Well!” John was tickled. “I’ve never been a matchmaker before.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft cleared his throat. “I’m very grateful to you.”</p><p class="p1">John blinked, for a moment unable to believe that Mycroft was sincere.</p><p class="p1">“We quit smoking and embraced all other vices,” Mycroft added, not quite able to believe himself.</p><p class="p1">Greg laughed uproariously, curling his hand around the back of Mycroft’s neck. John chuckled too, and said, “I’m so glad you’re happy.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock’s response was quieter, but no less sincere. “At least the Ice Man has tried a vice for the first time ever. I think it humanizes you.”</p><p class="p1">Greg threw a paper napkin at him. “Oh, hush. You’ve got me to contend with, now. So tell me. Tonight. You’re conducting your own sonatinas.”</p><p class="p1">Sherlock grimaced. “I <em>can </em>conduct, Lestrade.”</p><p class="p1">Greg put his hands up in innocence. “No one says you can’t. I’m sure you can.” He leaned over confidentially toward John. “They offered more money if he showed up with a baton, didn’t they?”</p><p class="p1">John nodded, faux-serious.</p><p class="p1">Greg sighed. “All the composer-geniuses are conducting now, it’s bollocks, all us non-genius conductors are going to be run right out of business.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t worry too much,” Sherlock said, crunching his ice. “I would never be caught dead teaching choir boys how to sing.”</p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">There was a strange intimacy in sharing a hotel room with Greg. He read while Greg took a long cold shower, and then they alternated. They shaved side by side in the too-bright bathroom, and Mycroft’s glances at Greg’s body, the towel slung low around his waist, were tempting him to make his second foray into blow jobs. They’d only been doing this a few weeks. He was still learning.</p><p class="p1">When they were dressed, Greg devastating in his natty silvery gray suit, Mycroft kissed him and slid the room key into his jacket pocket.</p><p class="p1">“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want tonight,” Greg said, although the respectful tenor of the comment was perhaps lost, as he said it against the skin behind Mycroft’s ear.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t intend to force me into high stakes gambling or shouting fire in a crowded cathedral?” Mycroft was trying to kiss him and fasten his cufflinks simultaneously.</p><p class="p1">“Mm, those things I might try. I mean—I can try to keep my hands off you. In public. We don’t even have to appear as a couple if it makes you uncomfortable.”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft pulled back, blinking repeatedly.</p><p class="p1">“Darling—”</p><p class="p1">Mycroft put his hand on Greg’s shoulder to stop him. “I can’t stand the thought that my—reticence—would make you feel this way.”</p><p class="p1">“What way?”</p><p class="p1">“Give you… the sense that you have anything to be ashamed of. Or give you the sense that I’m not—<em>proud</em>.”</p><p class="p1">Greg bit his lip.</p><p class="p1">“<em>God</em>.” Mycroft pressed his face into Greg’s perfect lapels. “You are—perfect, gorgeous, and it’s so ridiculous, your being with me at all, and you think about my comfort 24 hours a day…”</p><p class="p1">“I get off on that,” Greg interrupted, and it was part joke, part confession, part deflection.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft raised his head and straightened the lapel, the collar, over that broad masculine chest. “I am shy. I am private. I am <em>tremendously pleased </em>to be seen with you. All true.”</p><p class="p1">Greg’s eyes were shining, all of a sudden, brimming with tears. “Alright,” he said, “alright.”</p><p class="p1">As they left the hotel room, he put his hand once more at the small of Mycroft’s back, steering him toward the lift. It was less declarative than handholding, but no less intimate. Mycroft would find his hand there many times over the course of the evening, and every time it was an anchor, a promise. <em>I am home when I am with you. </em></p><p class="p2">~~~</p><p class="p1">The concert was to be held at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square, and attended by many important people in the scholarly and popular classical music worlds. “Will Jan be there?” Mycroft said, not hiding his jealousy, meaning to flatter.</p><p class="p1">“You cheeky thing,” Greg said, laughing, “and <em>no</em>, and you <em>know </em>you have nothing to worry about.”</p><p class="p1">As it happened, that was true.</p><p class="p1">They found John inside, and with their credentials as brother and partner (and guest) of the featured composer, they made their way to their excellent seats. Greg was continually accosted by people he knew. Each time, he let himself be drawn into the first bit of gossip or greeting before saying, “And it’s such a good night for it, isn’t it? Say, let me introduce you to my fella, Mycroft Holmes.” When asked how they’d met, he said, “Corpus Christi isn’t too far away,” which meant little to people who didn’t live in Cambridge, but he didn’t explain further. When they met the artistic director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Greg called Mycroft his <em>partner</em>, instead.</p><p class="p1">Mycroft had questions. Are you someone’s partner if you have never given them a blowjob? If you still couldn’t sleep deeply enough for it to count when you slept in their bed? If you had not met their parents or even many of their friends? He felt under qualified for the position. At the same time it deeply flattered him. Overwhelmed by the rush of strangers, he occupied himself with fantasies of introducing Greg to his academic colleagues as his partner, or his “fella.” <em>This is Gregory. He plays the pipe organ and is the conductor of one of the most prestigious choirs in the world. He is gay and so am I, and—</em>. Here the fantasy devolved. The simple, revelatory truth of it sounded too juvenile. But it was a start.</p><p class="p1">Greg laid his arm on the back rail of the pew against Mycroft’s shoulder blades, just for a minute, as the concert set to began. There was a full orchestra splayed out before them, as with so many of Sherlock’s pieces. There was applause for the first violin, who Greg informed him sotto voce in one ear was widely considered to be the best in Britain. Then came Sherlock, lanky and serious in his tailcoat. Mycroft turned to the other side in time to see John’s face come alive as he watched. His eyes never left Sherlock’s form. There was something like awe in them.</p><p class="p1">Sherlock took the podium, readied his baton, and cast his eyes out over the orchestra. He did not use sheet music. This sonatina had originated inside his head, and it lived there still. He raised his hands, and when they came down, cymbals crashed.</p><p class="p1">As he always did, Mycroft gave himself over the music. For the first time, he did not have to watch Greg from across a crowded concert hall. His bulk was there, warm and still, beside him. When Mycroft snuck a look, he could have sworn he could watch him listen.</p><p class="p1">There were little golf pencils in the backs of the pews, for prayer requests and donations. Mycroft took one when Greg’s attention was on the music, and wrote in his scratchy, ordinary handwriting on a fragment of program paper: <em>I am in love with you. </em></p><p class="p1">He didn’t do anything with the note, just held it in his hands.</p><p class="p1">When Greg stood to find the loo at intermission, Mycroft slipped the ripped bit of paper into his pocket, knowing he wouldn’t find it until he went for his room key back at the hotel. He could have his revelation then.</p><p class="p1">Just now, the second half was about to start, and they were wheeling in the grand piano for the second sonatina. Greg would come back and offer Mycroft a swig from his flask—no intermission wine in a church venue, and Greg came prepared—and when they stood to leave, Mycroft was going to hold his hand. He was going to tell the truth. He was going to ask for what he wanted. He could already hear how it was going to sound.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>That's it! Thanks so much for reading along on this one. I'm planning to work on my gender bent Mystrade story (one written for my girlfriend, who has coined "Dykecroft"), so if you want to read about lesbian Mystrade, stay tuned for that!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thegables.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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